BOOK V. A PROMINENT MAN

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CÆSAR

ON a day of days, Cæsar gave audience-Cæsar, great Lord of all this striving earth.

And they that stood in the Audience-chamber (which was the center of Rome, which, in its turn, was center of the world) were very, very wretched, and very fearful of their lives.

Certain of these on trial!

"My power!" shouted Cæsar thereunto. "Ye hounds! Ye would take it from me-my power, my divinity. Ye would make my godhead into naught. Therefore away to the Mines!"

They that stood before him on their trial were removed from the chamber of audience.

And still others were brought in their stead. These were accused of having conspired against Casar, but certain of the witnesses declared that he that had brought the delation had lied.

Said Cæsar, "I will know the full of this matter on another day. Meantime-to the cross!"

And the accused were removed for crucifixion.

Still others were brought who were charged with being Christians. Said Cæsar unto them, "Are ye indeed such bad people?" They said, "We are Christians, but Christians are not bad people." Cried Cæsar, "Ye do confess it unto me that ye are Christians! My godhead, oh my godhead, what is become of my godhead? But I will be gentle with you. Unto the beasts.'

Then came one who was charged with stealing a sum from Cæsar's chests. Cæsar said unto him, "Hast thou stolen it?" The man went close up unto him, and gazed him in the eye, and was not shaken. Said he, "Yea, Lord, I have stolen it. And I am sorry, not indeed for this, that I am a thief, but that I have stolen from Cæsar, who is very good to his people, and who is the god of all this universe."

Then grinned Cæsar in the midst of his fatnesses. Shouted he, "By mine own divinity, spoken like a man. No filthy worm to cringe and crawl, even before the Lord of All this Universe, art thou. Here

is a kiss for thee. Give him a quittance, treasure-bearer, for his crime, which is venial, and twice the money he hath stolen.-Is there yet another?"

Another came. And this one, having seen how well the brazen criminal before him had fared, thought to be brazen too. He went up therefore, or ever the charge was read, anigh unto Cæsar, and smiled in his teeth.

"Why grinnest thou?" cried Cæsar in a rage.

"Even because I am charged with having laughed at thee as thou rodest about the streets."

"Didst thou laugh?"

"Yea, I laughed, O Lord of All this World. I laughed and laughed again, and yet again I laughed. And for this I laughed, that thou didst say, 'I am Lord of All this World.'"

"And wast much amused?"

"Greatly amused, O Cæsar."

"Take him out," cried the Lord of All the World, in a voice like a thunderbolt. "Take out the smiling philosopher, and let him smile head downward from a cross.-Now, if there be no more appeals for justice unto me, let us close the day with sweet sacrifice."

An officer asked, "To whom shall we sacrifice?"

"To whom? Askest thou, O officer of this court, 'To whom?'"' He took his dagger, and ran upon him that had asked the question, and stabbed him to the heart. "Now may the whole world know that, when Cæsar biddeth a sacrifice be offered, it is a sacrifice unto himself.

"To the temple!-Where is Sarcogenes?"

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD

Now, in the campagna, which compasseth round about the majesty and might of Rome, there were shepherds that watched their flocks, and led them in and out among the multitudes of tombs.

Two of these men were shepherding their sheep in the fields of the Appian Way-Asper and Inhumanus. Asper saith to Inhumanus, "A many great ones lies hereabouts."

"Thou sayest truly, fool. And a many of them have been dead a many years.

"Yea, and all of them are fain to be dead a many more years hereafter than yet they have been dead in the past.'

"Well said, ruffian. And, now I think of it, what thou hast just spat forth containeth a tid-bit of humor. Thou didst not know that. Come hither, sheep. Come, I will lead thee, Grass-eater. Didst thou think thou knewest more- ""

"Who is he that cometh with such enormous strides? Not one of us, not one of old Septicollis.'

"Ah, mushroom, it is Parush, a Jew. I know him. Canst not fool me."

"It is not Parush," quoth the other, "not that man which prayeth in the Forum Boarium, again on all public bridges, yea and in the very Basilica Julia itself. I have seen him on market-days, Parush. Nay it is not he, fool. Wait. I can remember this man's name. It is Alukah. Also a Jew is he, but named Alukah, and a very different, more absorbent kind of Jew than is Parush. Alukah, the horse-leech.”

Then, as the wind blew and lifted the night-black locks from the forehead of the striding Jew, Asper crieth out: "Well, by the sufferings in Hades! All Jews look alike. Three letters! Let us stone the fellow. See! Here be good-sized stones."

"Caution! Caution, fool!"

"And so make up for our misconceptions."

"Caution. He looketh not like one that might be stoned easily.' "We twain can do it.-Come hither, sheep, the best of the picking is whither I would guide thee. He hath heard us, and cometh."

"Nay he goeth on (ye fool not me) and heareth not either, for his eyes are for the city, and his ears are with his eyes. He hath ne'er beheld the Mistress of the World afore, who hath enchained him. See, he stumbleth!"'

"Yet again!"

And indeed the Jew did not so much as note that he was stumbling, though he stumbled many a time and heavily in that hour. For to Simon of Cyrene this was the acme of his life. That day when the earth did shake and yawn and deliver him up from the bowels of the very Mines was not of a surety so much a day of days as this one. He knew not, truly, that in far gone tertiary time, the waves of the Great Sea had brake upon the limestone mountains even at Cameria. Nor that, in the quaternary epoch, two groups of vast volcanoes had arisen from the waters at each end of the bay, and (God having spoke unto them) they belched forth seas of fire and liquid stone, which slowly did dislodge the waste of waters back into the Great Sea. And then that the Tiber and the Anio, running from

the mountains through the fire-made plain, and also into the sea, channelled out ways and passages and made the Roman Campagna, whereon Rome might sit and to which on a day, a certain Simon of Cyrene

As he passed a turn in the road, behold! Rome full and splendid before his astonished eyes! Rome! Majestic and marbled she stood on her domineering hills, far above the plebeian landscape, stacked and pillared, tier on tier, temple on temple, palace on palace, basilica on basilica, and down around her base an uneasy mist, or groanfilled smoke, as if she had just arisen from the fires and suffocations of Gehenna.

How the massive buildings jostled each other, standing a-tiptoe, peering like people, the one above the next one's shoulders! What did they look at, all those mighty edifices? The channels of the world's trade. He would see that vision for himself. Let him on.

A stone fell close at his feet, and he looketh round, yet seeth two shepherds merely, pasturing their flocks. Another, and he did not even withdraw his gaze off Rome.

Then there began to float into his nostrils the thick, curious smells of the great city, and the Jew rejoiced much in them, and expanded his great lungs, and exulted like unto a horse eager to run into battle. Such a stirring, of a verity, and tumbling, and confused uprising and insurgence of longings and yearnings, passionate aspirations and feverish ambitions, began to take possession of his soul, that he soon perceived he really had never been in existence before. Was this truly Simon of Cyrene? Was this the simple shepherd of Cyrenaica, of the holy fields round Migdal Eder?

He beheld himself as the favorite of Cæsar, the owner of a brilliant palace (perhaps like that which Lampadephorus himself had had in Rome) the master of innumerable slaves. His ships should fly the seas like troops of swallows, his caravans thread the desert passages like swarms of ants. The world should know of his name and tremble at his power, even where the power and the far-reaching name of Cæsar were not yet known.

Now, as the name of Cæsar came into his thoughts, he began to fear. He was not, by his make, one greatly inclined to trepidation, thus forming in respect, say, unto a man like Trivialis so sharp and astonishing a foil. Yet as he looked at the Mistress of the World (which was, in a manner of speaking, The World) and thought of Ophidion, the favorite of Cæsar, and of Cæsar himself (whose mark was even now upon him) Cæsar, so jealous of his own godhead

And he, the Jew, a messenger from another god, a God that was one and one only, jealous also of His oneness. What, now, about that?

"Ah, Jehovah," he said in his heart, "I will live for thee and will ever love thee, even as always heretofore I have loved thee and have lived for thee. But thou art very great, I small. And Cæsar, too, is great. And Ophidion is powerful with Cæsar."

Then the man decided once for all, with an iron determination, which never in all the coming years was broke, to get him wealth and power within this city of Rome. "By the fears I have felt," said he, "by the hungers I have endured, by the heat and the cold, the innumerable rejections at doorways, the foul mockeries, the cursings, the stripes, by—yea, by thee thyself, O Adonai, I do swear that I will never testify if I can help it unto the heathen as concerning thee. Let the Nations by their own great thinking find thee out. As for me, I must have a watchfulness over mine own bones."

The cumulus clouds above the mighty city piled and re-piled to incredible heights. Kindling and burning with the inexpressible splendor of the ever-brighter day, they wavered, turned and leaned, and slowly toppled, until at length they deeply dropped into some unfathomable abyss-only, however, to rise again. And again. And yet again and again and again and again. And each time higher, but only to fall more quickly.

There were crumblings of thunder, now and then, among these clouds. Simon believed, for a little space, that he saw a rainbow high-arched above the farther hill-the Palatine.

Well, there was one thing sure. He would specially put a bridle on his tongue in this city. Cool calculation should ever be his guide. He would be thinking all the while precisely as he pleased, but his thoughts would remain unuttered-such, at least, as might do damage to his purse and power. His life, his deeds, his outward aspect and demeanor, he himself, in brief, should be the slave of no emotion. His words should be the dictates of his intellect alone.

"High o'er all the world

The cross itself shall rise!"

The words were sweetly sung by one that was coming up behind Simon.

Simon, therefore, turned, and, seeing that the man was of fair demeanor, said unto him: "Brother" (for he was now a-minded to fellowship all, and to be, in a way, like unto all).

But the man said, "Art not thou Simon of Cyrene?" "Yea," said Simon, "I am he."