s, life eternal.'"

'For the present, that's quite clear,' said Doctor Baruch, 'he promises
for the present to the men of his band a hundred houses in lieu of one
they quit to follow him; a field a hundred times larger than that they
abandon; and, in addition, for the future, in after ages, he assures
these miscreants a life eternal! Now where will he obtain these hundred
houses for one?' continued Jonas the banker: 'yes, where will he get
them; these fields promised to the vagabonds? He will take them from us,
the possessors of wealth, us, the camels, for whom the entrance to
Paradise is as narrow as the eye of a needle, because we are rich.'

'I think, seigneurs,' said Jane, 'that you do not rightly interpret the
words of the young master: they have a figurative sense.'

'Really!' exclaimed Jane's husband in a tone of irony: 'well, let us try
this wonderful figure.'

'When Jesus of Nazareth says, that those who will follow him shall have
for the present a hundred times more than what they abandon, he means by
that, I think, that the consciousness of preaching good news, the love
of our neighbor, the compassion for the suffering and the feeble, will
compensate fourfold for the renunciation we have imposed on ourselves.'

These wise and gentle words of Jane were but ill received by the guests
of Pontius Pilate; and the high priest exclaimed:

'I pity your wife, Seigneur Chusa, for being like so many others,
blinded by the Nazarene. He simply requires good materials; for here is
something a little stronger. He has the audacity to send the vagabonds,
whom he calls his disciples, to establish themselves, to eat and drink
as they like in houses, without paying anything, under pretence of
preaching in them his abominable doctrines.'

'How, seigneurs,' said Gremion, 'in your country such violences are
possible, and remain unpunished? People come to your house and establish
themselves by force, and eat and drink there under the pretence of
holding forth?'

'Those who receive the disciples of the young man of Nazareth,' replied
Jane, 'receive them voluntarily.'

'Yes,' said Jonas, 'some of them; but the majority of those who harbor
these vagabonds yield to fear, to threats; or, according to the orders
of the Nazarene, those who refuse to lodge these idle vagabonds are
doomed by him to eternal fire.'

Fresh clamors arose at the narration of the further misdeeds of the
Nazarene.

''Tis an intolerable tyranny!'

'Th