n that he happened to be a genuinely
religious man, concerned much more with an intimate sense of God than
with the slaying of bullocks and rams.

He had accepted the sacrifices as part of a ritual which should not be
questioned and which he had never questioned: yet, without discussion,
without argument, they fell in his estimation without pain, as naturally
as a leaf falls. A friend quoted to him a certain well-known passage in
Isaiah, and not the whole of it: only a few words; and from that moment
the Temple, the priests and the sacrifices became every day more
distasteful to him than they were the day before, setting him pondering
on the mind of the man who lives upon religion while laughing in his
beard at his dupe; he contrasted him with the fellow that drives in his
beast for slaughter and pays his yearly dole; he remembered how he loved
the prophets instinctively though the priests always seemed a little
alien, even before he knew them. Yet he never imagined them to be as far
from true religion (which is the love of God) as he found them; for they
did not try to conceal their scepticism from him: knowing him to be a
friend of the High Priest, it had seemed to them that they might indulge
their wit as they pleased, and once he had even to reprove some priests,
so blasphemous did their jests appear to him. An unusually fat bullock
caused them to speak of the fine regalement he would be to Jahveh's
nostrils. One sacristan, mentioning the sacred name, figured Jahveh as
pressing forward with dilated nostrils. There is no belly in heaven, he
said: its joys are entirely olfactory, and when this beast is smoking,
Jahveh will call down the angels Michael and Gabriel. As if not
satisfied with this blasphemy, as if it were not enough, he turned to
the sacristans by him, to ask them if they could not hear the angels
sniffing as they leaned forward out of their clouds. My priests are
doing splendidly: the fat of this beast is delicious in our nostrils;
were the words he attributed to Jahveh. Michael and Gabriel, he said,
would reply: it is indeed as thou sayest, Sire!

Joseph marvelled that priests could speak like this, and tried to forget
the vile things they said, but they were unforgettable: he treasured
them in his heart, for he could not do else, and when he did speak, it
was at first cautiously, though there was little need for caution; for
he found to his surprise that everybody knew that the Sadducees did not
belie