wise man.

A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

Three-and-thirty years of the life of Artaban had passed away, and he
was still a pilgrim and a seeker after light. His hair, once darker than
the cliffs of Zagros, was now white as the wintry snow that covered
them. His eyes, that once flashed like flames of fire, were dull as
embers smouldering among the ashes.

Worn and weary and ready to die, but still looking for the King, he had
come for the last time to Jerusalem. He had often visited the holy city
before, and had searched through all its lanes and crowded hovels and
black prisons without finding any trace of the family of Nazarenes who
had fled from Bethlehem long ago. But now it seemed as if he must make
one more effort, and something whispered in his heart that, at last, he
might succeed. It was the season of the Passover. The city was
thronged with strangers. The children of Israel, scattered in far lands
all over the world, had returned to the Temple for the great feast, and
there had been a confusion of tongues in the narrow streets for many
days.

But on this day there was a singular agitation visible in the multitude.
The sky was veiled with a portentous gloom, and currents of excitement
seemed to flash through the crowd like the thrill which shakes the
forest on the eve of a storm. A secret tide was sweeping them all one
way. The clatter of sandals, and the soft, thick sound of thousands of
bare feet shuffling over the stones, flowed unceasingly along the street
that leads to the Damascus gate.

Artaban joined company with a group of people from his own country,
Parthian Jews who had come up to keep the Passover, and inquired of them
the cause of the tumult, and where they were going.

"We are going," they answered, "to the place called Golgotha, outside
the city walls, where there is to be an execution. Have you not heard
what has happened? Two famous robbers are to be crucified, and with them
another, called Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done many wonderful
works among the people, so that they love him greatly. But the priests
and elders have said that he must die, because he gave himself out to be
the Son of God. And Pilate has sent him to the cross because he said
that he was the 'King of the Jews.'"

How strangely these familiar words fell upon the tired heart of Artaban!
They had led him for a lifetime over land and sea. And now they came to
him darkly and mysteriously like a message of despair