, and gliding in among the crowd he
questioned the nearest to him, who happened to be Judas, who told him
that Jesus didn't know for certain if he were called to go to Jerusalem
for the Feast of the Tabernacles. The Master foresees his death in
Jerusalem, but he is not sure if it be ordained for this year or the
next. Peter would dissuade him, he added, and in the midst of his
wonderment Joseph heard from Judas that Jesus had elected his apostles,
and now Joseph remembered how, speaking out of his heart, he uttered a
little cry and said: it was because I am a rich man that he didn't think
of me. But Judas answered that there might be another reason, to which
he replied: there can be no other reason except the simple one--I wasn't
there and he didn't think of me. But Judas murmured that there might be
another reason--he never allows a disciple to desert him, whatever
reason may be for so doing. But there was no desertion on my part. My
father's illness! Wait in any case, Judas had said, till the Master has
fallen out of his mood, for he is in his blackest now; we dare not speak
to him. But I couldn't believe that that could make any difference,
Joseph said to himself, and he put the monkey away from him somewhat
harshly, and fell to thinking how he ran to Jesus, his story on his
lips. But it all seemed to drift away from him the moment he looked upon
Jesus, so changed was he from the Jesus he had seen in the cenoby, a
young man of somewhat stern countenance and cold and thin, with the neck
erect, walking with a measured gait, whose eyes were cold and distant,
though they could descend from their starry heights and rest for a
moment almost affectionately on the face of a mortal. That was two years
ago. And the Jesus whom he met in rags by the lake-side one evening and
journeyed with as far as Caesarea Philippi, to Tyre and Sidon, was no
doubt very different from the severe young man he had seen in the
monastery. He had grown older, more careworn, but the first Jesus still
lingered in the second, whereas the Jesus he was looking at now was a
new Jesus, one whom he had seen never before; the cheeks were fallen in
and the eyes that he remembered soft and luminous were now concentrated;
a sort of malignant hate glowered in them: he seemed to hate all he
looked upon; and his features seemed to have enlarged, the nose and chin
were more prominent, and the body was shrunken. A sword that is wearing
out its scabbard was the thought