yard was still
there, and that a caravan was waiting for orders to return to Jericho.
The orders were forgotten on the way to the yard, and the clerk had to
remind him, and sometimes to say: Master, if you'll allow me, I will
settle this business for you.

Joseph was glad of his clerk's help, and he returned to the ledger, and,
staring at figures which he did not see, he sat thinking of Jesus, of
the night they walked by the lake's edge, of the day spent in the woods
above Capernaum, and the various towns of Syria that they visited. It
seemed to him that the good days had gone over for ever, and it was but
a sad pleasure to remember the pagans that liked Jesus' miracles without
being able to abandon their own gods. Only Peter could bring a smile
into his face; a smile wandered round his lips, for it was impossible to
think of Peter and not to smile. But the smile faded quickly and the old
pain gripped his heart.

I have lost Jesus for ever, he said, and at that moment a sudden rap at
his door awoke him from his reveries. He was angry with his clerk, but
he tried to disguise his anger, for he was conscious that he must
present a very ridiculous appearance to his clerk, unless, indeed, which
was quite likely, his clerk was indifferent to anything but the business
of the counting-house. Be this as it may, he was an old and confidential
servant who made no comments and asked no questions. Joseph was
grateful to his clerk for his assumed ignorance and an hour later Joseph
bade him good-night. I shall see thee in the morning, to which Samuel
answered: yes, sir; and Joseph was left alone in the crowded street of
Jerusalem, staring at the passengers as they went, wondering if they
were realities, everyone compelled by a business or a desire, or merely
shadows, figments of his imagination and himself no more than a shadow,
a something that moved and that must move across the valley of
Jehoshaphat and up the Mount of Olives. Why that way more than any other
way? he asked himself: because it is the shortest way. As if that
mattered, he added, and as soon as he reached the top of the Mount of
Olives he looked over the desert and was surprised by the smallness of
the hills; like the people who lived among them, they seemed to him to
have dwindled. The world is much smaller than I thought, he said. That
is it, the world seems to have dwindled into a sort of ash-heap; life
has become as tasteless as ashes. It can only end, he said to