Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI

And on his arrival in Jerusalem Joseph stood for a moment before his camel thanking the beast for his great, rocking stride, which has given me, he said, respite from thinking for two whole days and part of two nights. But I cannot be always on the back of a camel, he continued, and must now rely on my business to help me to forget; and he strove to apply his mind to every count that came before him, but in the middle of every one his thoughts would fly away to Galilee, and the merchant waiting to receive the provisions he had come to fetch wondered of what the young man was thinking, and the cause of the melancholy that was in his face.

He was still less master of his thoughts when he sat alone, his ledger before him; and finding he could not add up the figures, he would abandon himself without restraint to his grief; and very often it was so deep that when the clerk opened the door it took Joseph some moments to remember that he was in his counting-house; and when the clerk spoke of the camel-drivers that were waiting in the yard behind the counting-house for orders, it was only by an effort of will that he collected his thoughts sufficiently to realise that the yard was still there, and that a caravan was waiting for orders to return to Jericho. The orders were forgotten on the way to the yard, and the clerk had to remind him, and sometimes to say: Master, if you'll allow me, I will settle this business for you.

Joseph was glad of his clerk's help, and he returned to the ledger, and, staring at figures which he did not see, he sat thinking of Jesus, of the night they walked by the lake's edge, of the day spent in the woods above Capernaum, and the various towns of Syria that they visited. It seemed to him that the good days had gone over for ever, and it was but a sad pleasure to remember the pagans that liked Jesus' miracles without being able to abandon their own gods. Only Peter could bring a smile into his face; a smile wandered round his lips, for it was impossible to think of Peter and not to smile. But the smile faded quickly and the old pain gripped his heart.

I have lost Jesus for ever, he said, and at that moment a sudden rap at his door awoke him from his reveries. He was angry with his clerk, but he tried to disguise his anger, for he was conscious that he must present a very ridiculous appearance to his clerk, unless, indeed, which was quite likely, his clerk was indifferent to anything but the business of the counting-house. Be this as it may, he was an old and confidential servant who made no comments and asked no questions. Joseph was grateful to his clerk for his assumed ignorance and an hour later Joseph bade him good-night. I shall see thee in the morning, to which Samuel answered: yes, sir; and Joseph was left alone in the crowded street of Jerusalem, staring at the passengers as they went, wondering if they were realities, everyone compelled by a business or a desire, or merely shadows, figments of his imagination and himself no more than a shadow, a something that moved and that must move across the valley of Jehoshaphat and up the Mount of Olives. Why that way more than any other way? he asked himself: because it is the shortest way. As if that mattered, he added, and as soon as he reached the top of the Mount of Olives he looked over the desert and was surprised by the smallness of the hills; like the people who lived among them, they seemed to him to have dwindled. The world is much smaller than I thought, he said. That is it, the world seems to have dwindled into a sort of ash-heap; life has become as tasteless as ashes. It can only end, he said to himself, by my discovering something that interests me, but nothing interests me except Jesus. Lack of desire, he said, is my burden, for, desiring one thing too much, I have lost desire for all else, and that is why life has come to me like an ash-heap.

As the days went by he began to feel life more oppressive and unendurable, till one evening the thought crossed his mind that change of scene might be a great benefit to him. If he were to go to Egypt, he would journey for fifteen days through the desert, the rocking stride of the camel would keep him from thinking, and he might arrive in Egypt eager to listen to the philosophers again. But the temptations that Egypt presented faded almost as soon as they had arisen, and he deemed that it might be better for him to choose a city oversea. A sea voyage, he thought, will cheer me more than a long journey across the desert, and Joppa is but a day's journey from Jerusalem. But the shipping is more frequent from Caesarea, and it is not as far; and for a moment it seemed to him that he would like to be on board a ship watching the wind making the sail beautiful. But to what port should he be making for? he asked. Why not to Greece?--for there are philosophers as great or greater than those of Alexandria. But philosophers are out of my humour, he added, and, putting Athens aside, he bethought himself of Corinth, and the variegated world he would meet there. From every port ships come to Corinth, bringing different habits, customs, languages, religions; and for the better part of the evening Corinth seemed to be his destination.

Corinth was famous for its courtesans, and he remembered suddenly that the most celebrated were collected there; and it may have been the courtesans that kept him from this journey, and his thoughts turning from vice to marriage a bitterness rose up in his mind against his father for the persistency with which Dan reminded him in and out of season that every man's duty is to bring children into the world.

It had seemed to him that in asking him to take a wife to his discomfort his father was asking him too much, and he had put the question aside; but he was now without will to resist any memory that might befall him, and for the first time he allowed his thoughts to dwell on his father's implied regret that he had never caught his son near a servant girl's bed. His unwillingness to impugn his father's opinions kept him heretofore from pondering on his words, but feeling his life to be now broken and cast away, there seemed to arise some reasons for an examination of his father's words. They could not mean anything else than that a young man was following the natural instincts if he lingered about a young girl's room; and that to be without this instinct was almost a worse misfortune than to be possessed by it to the practical exclusion of other interests.

His father, it is true, may have argued the matter out with himself somewhat in this fashion: that love of women in a man may be controlled; and looking back into his own life he may have found this view confirmed. Joseph remembered that his grandmother often spoke to him of Dan's great love of his wife, and it might be that he had never loved another woman; few men, however, were as fortunate as his father, and Joseph could not help thinking that it were better to put women out of his mind altogether than to become inflamed by the sight of every woman. He believed that was why he had always kept all thoughts of women out of his mind; but it seemed to him now that a wife would break the monotony that he saw in front of him, and were he to meet a woman such as his father seems to have met he might take her to live with him. He thought of himself as her husband, though he was by no means sure that married life was a possible makeshift for the life he sought and was obliged to forgo, but as life seemed an obligation from which he could not reasonably escape he thought he would like to share it with some woman who would give him children. His father desired grandchildren, and since he had partly sacrificed his life for his father's sake, he might, it seemed to him, sacrifice himself wholly. But could he? That did not depend altogether on himself, and with the view to discovering the turn of his sex instinct he called to mind all the women he had seen, asking himself as each rose up before him if he could marry her. There were some that seemed nearer to his desire than others, and it was with the view to honourable marriage that he called upon his friends, and his father's friends, and passed his eyes over all their daughters; but the girl whose image had lingered more pleasantly than any other in his memory had married lately, and all the others inspired only a physical aversion which he felt none would succeed in overcoming. He had seen some Greek women, and been attracted in a way, for they were not too like their sex; but these Jewish women--the women of his race--seemed to him as gross in their minds as in their bodies, and it surprised him to find that though many men seemed to think as he did about these women, they were not repelled as he was, but accepted them willingly, even greedily, as instruments of pleasure and afterwards as mothers of children. But I am not as these men are, he said; my father must bear his sorrow like another; and in meditation it seemed to him that it would not be reasonable that his father should get everything he desired and his son nothing.

His father had gotten more out of life than ever he should get; he would have his son till he died (so far as he could he would secure him that satisfaction), and after death this world and its shows concern us not. But it may well be that we die out of one life to be born into another life, that everything that passes is replaced by an equivalent, he said, repeating the words of a Greek philosopher to whom he had been much addicted in happy days gone by, and that reality is but an eternal shaping and reshaping of things. All that is beyond doubt, he continued, is that things pass too quickly for us to have any certain knowledge of them, our only standard being our own flitting impressions; and as all men bring a different sensitiveness into the world, knowledge is a word without meaning, for there can be no knowledge. Every race is possessed of a different sensitiveness, he said, as he passed up the Mount of Olives on his way home. We ask for miracles, but the Greeks are satisfied with reason. Am I Greek or Jew? he asked, for he was looking forward to some silent hours with a book of Greek philosophy and hoped to forget himself in the manuscript. But he could not always keep his thoughts on the manuscript, and, forgetful of Heraclitus, he often sat thinking of Jesus' promise--that one morning men would awake to find that God had come to judge the world and divide it among those that repented their sins. He remembered he had forfeited his share in the Kingdom for his father's sake, or had he been driven out of the community because his belief in the coming of the Kingdom was insufficient? It is true that his belief had wavered, but he had always believed. Even his natural humility, of which he was conscious, did not allow him to doubt that his belief in Jesus was less fervid than that of Peter, James, John and the residue. The conviction was always quick in him that he felt more deeply than these publicans and fishers, yet Jesus retained them and sent him away.

The manuscript glided from his hand to the floor, and his thoughts wandered back to Alexandria, and he sat thinking that death must be rather the beginning than the end of things, for it were impossible to believe that life was an end in itself. Heraclitus was right: his present life could be nothing else but the death of another life. And as if to enforce this doctrine a recollection of his grandmother intruded upon his meditation. She was seventy-eight when she died, and her intellect must have faded some months before, but with her passing one of the servants told him that a curious expression came into her face--a sort of mocking expression, as if she had learnt the truth at last and was laughing at the dupes she left behind. She lay in a grave in Galilee, under some pleasant trees, and while thinking of her grave it occurred to him that he would not like to be put into the earth; his fancy favoured a tomb cut out of the rocks in Mount Scropas, for there, he said to himself, I shall be far from the Scribes and Pharisees, and going out on the terrace he stood under the cedars and watched for an hour the outlines of the humped hills that God had driven in endless disorder, like herds of cattle, all the way to Jericho, thinking all the while that it would be pleasant to lie out of hearing of all the silly hurly-burly that we call life. But the hurly-burly would not be silly if Jesus were by him, and he asked himself if Jesus was an illusion like all the rest, and as soon as the pain the question provoked had died away, his desire of a tomb took possession of him again, and it left him no peace, but led him out of the house every evening, up a zigzagging path along the hillside till he came to some rocks over against the desert. I shall lie in quiet here till he calls me, on a couch embedded in the wall and surmounted by an arch--but if he should prefer me to rise out of an humble grave? That I may not know, only that the poorest is not as unhappy as I, so I may as well have a tomb to my liking.

It was a long time since he had come to a resolve, and having come to one at last, he was happier. And in more cheerful mood he decided that now that the site was settled it would be well to seek information as to which are the best workmen to employ on the job.

But for him whose thoughts run on death nothing is harder to settle than where his bones shall lie; and next time he visited the hillside Joseph came upon rocks facing eastward, and it seemed to him that the rays of the rising sun should fall on his sepulchre; but a few days later, coming out of his house in great disquiet, it seemed to him he would lie happy if his tomb were visited every evening by the peaceful rays of the setting sun, and he asked himself how many years of life he would have to drag through before God released him from his prison. If he wished to die he could, for our lives are in our own hands. But he did not know that he cared to die and, overpowered with grief, he abandoned himself to metaphysical speculation, asking himself again if it were not true that to be born into this world meant to pass out of one life into another; therefore, if so, to die in this world only meant to pass into another, a life unknown to us, for all is unknown--nothing being fixed or permanent. We cannot bathe twice in the same river, so Heraclitus said, but we cannot bathe even once in the same river, he added; and to carry the master's thought a stage further was a pleasure, if any moment of his present life could be called pleasurable. He heard these sayings first in Alexandria, and, looking towards Jerusalem, he tried to recall the exact words of the sage regarding the futility of sacrifice. Our priests try, said Heraclitus, to purify themselves with blood and we admire them, but if a filthy man were to roll himself in the mud in the hope of cleaning himself we should think he was mad. In some such wise Heraclitus spoke, but it seemed to Joseph he had lost something of the spirit of the saying in too profuse wording of it. As he sought for the original epitome he heard his name called, and awaking from his recollections of Alexandria he looked up and saw before him a young man whom he remembered having seen at the Sanhedrin. Nicodemus was his name; and he remembered how the fellow had kept his eyes on him for one whole evening, trying at various times to engage him in talk; an insistent fellow who, despite rebuffs, had followed him into the street after the meeting, and, refusing to be shaken off, had led the way so skilfully that Joseph found himself at last on Nicodemus' doorstep and with no option but to accept Nicodemus' invitation to enter. He did not like the fellow, but not on account of his insistence; it was not his insistence that had prejudiced him against him as much as the young man's elaboration of raiment, his hairdressing above all; he wore curls on either side that must have taken his barber a long while to prepare, and he exhaled scents. He wore bracelets, and from his appearance Joseph had not been able to refrain from imagining lascivious pictures on the walls of his house and statues in the corners of the rooms--in a word, he thought he had been persuaded to enter an ultra-Greek house.

In this he was, however, mistaken, and in the hour they spent together his host's thoughts were much less occupied than Joseph expected them to be with the jewels on his neck and his wrists, and the rich tassels on his sash. He talked of many things, but his real thoughts were upon arms; and he showed Joseph scimitars and daggers. Despite a long discussion on the steel of Damascus, Joseph could not bring himself to believe that Nicodemus' interests in heroic warfare were more than intellectual caprice: and he regarded as entirely superficial Nicodemus' attacks on the present-day Jews, whose sloth and indolence he reproved, saying that they had left the heroic spirit brought out of Arabia with their language, on the banks of the Euphrates. One hero, he admitted, they had produced in modern times (Judas Maccabeus), and Joseph heard for the first time that this great man always had addressed his soldiers in Hebrew. All the same he did not believe that Nicodemus was serious in his passionate demands for the Hebrew language, which had not been spoken since the Jews emerged from the pastoral stage. We should do well, Nicodemus said, to engage others to look to our flocks and herds, so that we may have leisure to ponder the texts of Talmud, nor do I hesitate to condemn my own class, the Sadducees, as the least worthy of all; for we look upon the Temple as a means of wealth, despising the poor people, who pay their half-shekel and bring their rams and their goats and bullocks hither.

He could talk for a long time in this way, his eyes abstracted from Joseph, fixed on the darkness of the room. While listening to him Joseph had often asked himself if there were a real inspiration behind that lean face, carven like a marble, with prominent nose and fading chin, or if he were a mere buffoon.

He succeeded in provoking a casual curiosity in Joseph, but he had not infected Joseph with any desire of his acquaintance; his visits to the counting-house had not been returned. Yet this meeting on the hillside was not altogether unwelcome, and Joseph, to his surprise, surveyed the young man's ringlets and bracelets with consideration; he admired his many weapons, and listened to him with interest. He talked well, telling that the sword that hung from his thigh was from Damascus and recommending a merchant to Joseph who could be trusted to discover as fine a one for him. It was not wise to go about this lonely hillside unarmed, and Joseph was moved to ask him to draw the sword from its scabbard, which Nicodemus was only too glad to do, calling Joseph's attention to the beautiful engraving on the blade, and to the hilt studded with jewels. He drew a dagger from his jacket, a hardly less costly weapon, and Joseph was too abashed to speak of his buckler on his left arm and the spear that he held in his right hand. But, nothing loath, Nicodemus bubbled into explanation. It was part of his project to remind his fellow-countrymen that they too must arm themselves if they ever wished to throw off the Roman yoke.

So long as the Romans substitute a Hebrew word or letter for the head of Tiberius on the coin we pay the tribute willingly, he said as they followed the crooked path through the rocks up the hillside towards Joseph's house. And in reply to Joseph, who asked him if he believed in the coming end of the world, he answered that he did, but he interpreted the coming end of the world to mean the freeing of the people of Israel from the Roman yoke, astonishing Joseph by the vigour of his reply; for Joseph was not yet sure which was the truer part of this young man, the ringlets and the bracelets or the shield and the spear.

He was partial to long silences; and the next of these was so long that Joseph had begun to wonder, but when they reached the crest of the hill he burst into speech like a bird into song, asking what was happening in Galilee, avouching much interest in Jesus, whom he had heard of, but had never seen. Joseph, guessing that it was to obtain news of Jesus that Nicodemus sought him on the hillside, told him that he had not spoken of Jesus for many weeks, and found a sudden relief in relating all he knew about him: how Jesus said that father, mother, brother and sister must be abandoned. Yes, he had said, we must look upon all sacrifice as naught if we would obtain our ancient kingdom and language. But the Essenes have never spoken like that, Nicodemus urged: he is not an Essene, nor Moses, nor Elijah, nor Jeremiah. He is none of these: he is Judas Maccabeus come to life again: and henceforth I shall look upon myself as his disciple.

He spoke so loudly that any passer-by might have caught up his words; and there was danger from Joseph's servants, for they were now standing by his gate. He looked round uneasily, and as Nicodemus showed no signs of taking leave of him, he thought it would be more prudent to ask him into the house, warning him, however, that he had no beautiful things to show him in the way of engraved weapons, swords from Damascus or daggers from Circassia. It was not, however, to see beautiful weapons that Nicodemus inclined; only so far as they related to Jesus was he interested in arms; and he besought Joseph to tell him more of Jesus, whom he seemed to have already accepted as the leader of a revolt against the Romans. But Joseph, who had begun to fear the young man, protested that Jesus' Kingdom was not of this earth, thinking thereby to discredit Jesus in Nicodemus' eyes. Nicodemus was not to be put off so easily: the Jews spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven so that they might gain the kingdom of earth. A method not very remarkable for its success, Joseph interposed. The Romans do otherwise, never thinking about the Kingdom of Heaven, but only of riches and vainglory, whereas Jesus, he said, says it is as hard for the rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as it would be for a sword to pass through the eye of a needle. A sword through the eye of a needle, Nicodemus repeated, walking up and down the floor, stamping his lance as he went. He is the leader we have been waiting for. But it is not always thus that he speaks, Joseph interposed, I have heard him myself say: it is as hard for a rich man to enter heaven as it would be for a cow to calve in a rook's nest. As he went to and fro Nicodemus muttered: there is much to be said for this revision of his words. Jesus wishes to reach the imagination of the poor that know not swords. And he spoke for a long time of the indolence of the rich, of their gross pleasures and sensual indulgences. But we must give them swords, he added under his breath, as if he were speaking for himself alone and did not wish Joseph to hear, and then, awaking from his reverie, he turned to his host: tell me more of this remarkable man. And Joseph, who was now a little amused at his guest's extravagances, asked him if he knew the answer he had given to Antipas, who had invited him to his court in Tiberias in consequence of the renown of his miracles. Wishing to witness some exhibition of his skill, Antipas seated himself in imperial fashion on his highest throne, and, drawing his finest embroideries about him, asked Jesus if he had seen anybody attired so beautifully before, to which Jesus, who stood between two soldiers, a beggar in rags, before the king, replied: I have indeed; pheasants and peacocks, for nature apparelled them. Neither Moses nor Elijah nor Jeremiah, Nicodemus declared, could have invented a reply more apt. He asked Joseph if any further doubt lingered in his mind that Jesus was the prophet promised to the Jews. How I envy thy intercourse with him, he cried. How I envy thee, for thou art the friend of him that will overthrow the Romans.

Overthrow the Romans! Joseph repeated to himself, and as soon as his guest had left his house he was brought to a presentiment of the danger he incurred in allowing this man to come to his house: a young man who walked about extravagantly armed would, sooner or later, find himself haled before Pilate. Joseph felt that it would be better to refuse to see him if he called at the counting-house: an excuse could be found easily: his foreman might say: Master is away in Jericho. But when Nicodemus called a few weeks afterwards Joseph was constrained to tell his foreman to tell Nicodemus that he would see him. The truth was, Joseph was glad of an interruption, for his business was boring him more than it did usually, but he liked to pretend to himself that he could not escape from Nicodemus.

A new opinion of Nicodemus began to shape itself in his mind when Nicodemus said that many and many a year will have to pass before that can be done with success, and the Roman rule is so light that the people feel it not. It saves us from quarrels among ourselves, and who have quarrelled as bitterly as we have done? Joseph's heart softened at this appreciation of the Jewish people, and they began to talk in sympathy for the first time, and it was a pleasure to find themselves in this agreement, that before the Jews could conquer the Romans they would have to conquer themselves. He is more cautious than I thought for, Joseph muttered as he returned to his camel-drivers, for his guest had departed suddenly without giving any reason for his visitation. A spy he cannot be, Joseph said to himself. I stand too well with Pilate to be suspected of schemes of mutiny. But he will soon come under the notice of Pilate; and Joseph was not surprised when Pilate asked him if he knew an extravagantly dressed young man, Nicodemus by name. Joseph replied that he did, giving Pilate to understand that Nicodemus was no more than one of the many eccentrics to be found in every city, with a taste for the beauty of engraved swords, and little for the use of these weapons; and Pilate, who seemed to be of the same opinion himself, suddenly asked him if he had ever met in Galilee one named Jesus. Jesus from Nazareth, Pilate said; and Joseph watched the tall, handsome, pompous Roman, one of those intelligently stupid men of which there are so many about. He arrived, Pilate continued, in Jerusalem yesterday with a number of Galileans, all talking of the resurrection, and news has just reached me that he had been preaching in the Temple, creating some disturbance, which will, I hope, not be repeated, for disturbances in the Temple lead to disturbances in the streets. Does your father know this new prophet? As Joseph was about to answer one of Pilate's apparitors entered suddenly with papers that demanded the procurator's attention. We will talk over this on another occasion, Pilate said as he bent over the papers, and Joseph went out muttering: so he has come, so he has come to Jerusalem at last.

At any moment he might meet Jesus, and to stop to speak to him in the street would, in a sense, involve a profanation of his oath to his father; and he knew he could not turn aside from Jesus. He must therefore refrain from going up to Jerusalem and transact his business from his house by means of messengers. But if Pilate were to send for him? We cannot altogether avoid risk, he said to himself. I can do no more than remain within doors.

It was not many days afterwards that one of his servants came suddenly into the room. Nicodemus, Sir, is waiting in the hall and would see you, though I told him you were engaged with business. He says the matter on which he is come to speak to you is important. Well, then, let me see him, Joseph answered.

Now, what has happened? he asked. Has he said anything that the Sanhedrin will be able to punish him for? He threw some more olive roots on the fire and told the servant to bring a lamp. A lamp, he said, will be welcome, for this grey dusk is disheartening.

The weather is cold, so draw your chair near to the fire. I am glad to see you. The men waited for the servant to leave the room. We shall be more comfortable when the curtains are drawn. The lamp, I see, is beginning to burn up.... Nicodemus sat grave and hieratic, thin and tall, in the high chair, and the gloom on his face was so immovable that Joseph wasted no words. What has fallen out? he said, and Nicodemus asked him if he knew Phinehas, the great money-changer in the Temple. Joseph nodded, and, holding his hands before the fire, Nicodemus told his story very slowly, exasperating Joseph by his slowness; but he did not dare to bid him to hasten, and, holding himself in patience, he listened to him while he told that Phinehas was perhaps the worst of the extorters, the most noisy and arrogant, a vicious and quarrelsome man, who, yester-morning, was engaged with a rich Alexandrian Jew, Shamhuth, who had lately arrived from Alexandria and was buying oxen, rams and ewes in great numbers for sacrifice. We wondered at his munificence, Nicodemus said, not being able to explain it to ourselves, for the Feast of the Tabernacles is over; and our curiosity was still more roused when it became known that he was distributing largess. The man's appearance aroused suspicion, for it is indeed a fearful one. From his single eye to his chin a fearful avariciousness fills his face, and the empty, withered socket speaks of a close, sordid, secret passion, and so clearly that Jesus said: that man has not come to glorify God nor to repent of his sins. He is guilty of a great crime, and he would have it forgiven him. But the crime? Of what crime is he guilty? we asked. Jesus did not answer us, for at that moment some young man had come to listen to him, and the man's crime appeared to him as of little importance compared to his own teaching. Has he come, we asked, to pray that his sight may be restored to him? Jesus motioned to us that that was so; and he also bade us be silent, for stories of miracles have a great hold upon the human mind, and Jesus wished to teach some young men who had come to ask him how they were to live during these last days. But myself, consumed with desire to hear the man's story, mingled with the herdsmen who had brought in the cattle, and inquired how Shamhuth had lost his eye. None could tell me, and I failed to get tidings of him till I came upon an Alexandrian Jew who told me a strange story. Shamhuth's money came from his friend's wife, whom he married after causing him to be killed by hirelings; and when his senses tired of her he persuaded her daughter to come over to him in the night. Shamhuth always walked praying aloud, his eyes cast down lest they should fall upon a woman, and his wife did not suspect him. But one night she was bidden in a dream to seek her husband, and rising from her bed she descended and opened the door very softly, not wishing to disturb him in his sleep. The sight that met her eyes kindled such a great flame of hate in her that she returned to her room for a needle, and placing her hands upon her daughter's mouth she quickly pricked out both her eyes, and then, approaching her husband, she pricked out his right eye, and was about to prick out the other, but he slid from her hands and escaped, blind of an eye, to Jerusalem, bringing with him great sums of money in the hope that he may purchase a miracle, which is a great blasphemy in itself, and shows what the man really is in his heart.

Such was the story that the Alexandrian Jew, who knew him, told us; and as soon as these abominations became known in the Temple a riot began, and somebody cried: the adulterer must be put away. Whereupon Phinehas, seeing the large profits he had expected vanishing, turned to Jesus and said: it is thou who hast brought this disaster upon me, lying Galilean, who callest thyself the son of David, when all know ye to be the son of Joseph the Carpenter.

Son of David! Son of David! How can that be? the people began to ask each other, and in the midst of their questioning a great hilarity broke over them. In great wrath Jesus overturned Phinehas' table, and Phinehas would have overthrown Jesus had not Peter, who had armed himself with a sword, raised it. The people became like mad: tables were broken for staves, some rushed away to escape with a whole skin, and the frightened cattle dashed among them, a black bull goring many. And in all the mob Jesus was the fiercest fighter, lashing the people in the face with the thongs of the whip he had taken from a herdsman, and felling others with the handle. The cages of the doves were broken, the birds took flight, and the priests, at their wits' end, called for the guards to come down from the porticoes, and it was not till much blood had been spilt that order was restored. Joseph asked how Phinehas came out of all this trouble, and heard that he had escaped without injury. Merely losing a few shekels, not more, though he deserved to lose his life, for he placed his money above the Temple, not caring whether it was polluted by the presence of an adulterer, only thinking of the great profit he could make out of the man's sins, differing in no wise in this from the priests and sacristans.

Jesus should never have gone to the Temple nor come to Jerusalem, Joseph said. But in this Nicodemus could not agree with him, for if Jesus were the Messiah his mission was nothing less than to free Jerusalem from the Roman yoke. But he should have brought a larger body of disciples with him--some thousands, instead of a few hundreds--not enough to bring about the abolition of the Temple, which, according to Nicodemus, was the Galilean's project--one more difficult to accomplish than he thinks for. The Romans support the Temple, he cried, because the Temple divides us. I say it myself, Sadducee though I am.

It was these last words that proved to Joseph that the ringlets and bracelets did not comprise the whole of this young man's soul, and he was moved forthwith to confide the story of his father's sickness to him, dwelling on all its consequences: he had not been elected an apostle, and Jesus consequently had no one by to tell him that he must not speak of the abolition of the law in Jerusalem. But if he did not come to incite the people against the Temple, for what did he come? Nicodemus asked. You've heard him preach in Galilee, tell me who he is, and in what does his teaching consist?--a direct question that prompted Joseph to relate his associations with the Essenes, Banu, John, the search for Jesus in Egypt and among the Judean hills--a long story I'm afraid it is, Joseph mentioned apologetically to Nicodemus, who begged him to omit no detail of it. Nicodemus sat with his eyes fixed on Joseph while Joseph told of the discovery of Jesus in Galilee among his father's fishermen; and as if to excuse the almost immodest interest awakened in Nicodemus, Joseph murmured that the story owed nothing to his telling of it; he was telling it as plainly as it could be told for a purpose; Nicodemus must judge it fairly. Resuming his narrative, Joseph related the day spent in the forest and Jesus' interpretation of the prophecies. Nicodemus cried: he is the stone cut by no hand out of the mountain; the idol shall fall, and the stone that felled it shall grow as big as a mountain and fill the whole earth. _

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