ere must be an end put to such indignities, however.'

''Tis an organized pillage!'

'Consequently,' said the banker Jonas, 'the Seigneur Baruch was
perfectly right in saying, it is straight to chaos that this Nazarene is
leading us, to whom nothing is sacred; for I repeat, not content with
endeavoring to destroy the law, authority, property, and religion, he
would, to crown his infernal work, destroy all family ties!'

'Why, he is your Beelzebub in person!' exclaimed Gremion.

'What! my lords, this Nazarene would annihilate all family ties!'

'Yes, annihilate them by dividing them,' said Caiphus: 'annihilate them
by sowing discord and hatred in the domestic hearth! by arming the son
against the father! and servants against their masters!'

'Seigneurs,' continued Gremion, with an air of doubt, 'can a project so
abominable enter the head of a man?'

"Of a man, no," replied the high priest; "but of a Beelzebub like this
Nazarene; here's the proof from the undoubted report of the emissaries,
whom I spoke of; this cursed fellow pronounced the other day, the
horrible words following, speaking to the bands of beggars who never
quit him: 'Believe not that I have come to bring peace on earth, I have
brought the sword: I am come to bring fire on the earth, and all my
desire is that it may rise to a flame: it is disunion, I repeat, and not
peace, that I bring you; I am come to sow division between the father
and the son, the daughter and the mother, the daughter-in-law and the
mother-in-law: a man's own servants shall declare themselves his
enemies; in every house of five persons, two of them shall be against
the other three.'"

'Why, 'tis frightful!' exclaimed at once the banker Jonas, and the
intendant Chusa.

''Tis preaching the dissolution of family by hatred.'

''Tis preaching civil war!' exclaimed Gremion, the Roman: 'social war,
like that stirred up by Spartacus, the rebellious slave.'

"What! he has the hardihood to say, 'I am come to bring fire on the
earth, and all I desire is that it may rise to a flame; a man's own
servants shall declare themselves his enemies: in every house of five
persons, there shall be two against the others!' it is, as he had the
infernal audacity to say, 'bringing fire on the earth.'"

Jane had listened with painful impatience to all the accusations made
against the Nazarene; she therefore cried with a firm and animated
voice:

'Ah! my seigneurs, I am tired of listening to your c