after a little, he will justify the deed and take the bribe. Be gone.Pornographus?"

"Master."

"Knowest thou Integer, a knight?"

"I know him."

"Thou canst easily guess the will which I would have thee work upon him."

"I guess."

"A hypocritical appearance of austerity and Christian love. If that succeed not, the mask aside, and all the arts thou knowest. Seduce him. Be gone.

"Cain and Judas be my guide! Now whom shall I select for the Trans-Tiber? Fellow! Thou! Come here. In the Regio Judeorum -see unto it that on every day Parush becometh more 'separate,' that the old horse-leech, Alukah, sucketh ever harder and more hard; that Keseel is daily and hourly more a fool; Na-aph more concupiscent, and Gannab a thief. Away!

"As for Philautia, let me see-thou, Madam. Thou art in her employ." He whispered, "Delicate snares for her. She is Cæsar's wife. Yes, yes; thou art correct. Those are- Simple whispers in the ear. She is Cæsar's wife. Whispers, infinite suggestion-thou knowest.

"Now come thou, sirrah! Nay, thou." By these words he called unto him a man of his own hewing and polishing. To him he gave a bag of gold, promising yet other bags and heavier, in case a certain work (whereof he whispered most slyly in his ear) were done successfully. "Vengeance is sweet to me," said he, at length. "Forget not, I will not forget thee."

But as soon as the man had departed (which he did, saying "I know where all the others can be found, and will not mention thy name to any of them") then called Sarcogenes another man, saying in the softest of whispers: "Follow thou after him fleetly, and see where he goeth. If he do a certain deed of crime, speak thou not unto him concerning it, but catch him in a secret place, and there despatch him, so that he may not return to me or come again anigh this house."

He gave the man money, and the man promised to do as he had been instructed, and departed quickly and yet warily. And indeed they had all gone forth by the secret door in the wall.

Then calleth the Tempter of Our Brethren a mighty group of delators and secret agents up before him, some of whom laid in his hands little scrolls containing reports, and were given yet other

commissions to perform upon that day, or upon other days. And he gave unto them all certain commands, saying to each: "It is my will," or else "I will have this done: see thou unto it." And then to the whole body he cried, "Be on your ways. Stop not, any of you, for aught at all-for rain or for dust, for mud or for cold, heat or night or terrible tempest. And wherever ye do go, sneer ye and jeer ye at this Simon of Cyrene and at Christ-them twain crucifers. Go-shatter, decay, burn, seduce, transfix, kill, damn utterly."

And they left him, and he passed, foaming with a rage which, till now, he had just been able to conceal, into the courts where his slaves

were.

He took them at their various works, and tortured them. Of the one he struck an ear off, of another a hand, and yet another, who ventured to oppose him, he cast upon the ground, vomiting language which had come from the refuse of all the tongues of earth. Him he beat with a tribulum, and, afterwards, flayed alive.

And his servants fled before him through all the passages of his house.

And when the Seducer of Our Brethren had glutted his lust for suffering, he went into a secret apartment where none did follow, and, closing the door, stood for a time with his great hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes upturned to heaven.

"Almighty God," he said, at length, "I hate thee. Tyrant of the universe, 'tis thou I despise. How I hate you also, ye illimitable legions of angels."

The man threw up his hands once more, clutching at his bosom. He said, "I seem to have in me a lump of ice for a heart. Blessed Lucifer, guide thou me to a cure for this."

He went and stood before a polished pier of metal. Rending the clothing from his breast, he beheld in the mirror, directly over his heart, a deep cavern of corruption, which made him faintish. He applied to the place a hot iron. Then said he, "I am ever worse within. How come I to be so? How, rather, else? I believe on Christ and tremble, yet

"Ah Satan, thou art my god, mayhap my father in the flesh. Who wast thou, really, O my father, and thou, my mother also? None know. Shepherds, ye found me in a cave, dwelling with vipers. The snakes ye killed, but me ye took with you into your home. Later, ye wished ye had taken the vipers. There was a theka about my neck. Afterward, in Babylon, the chief of the temple-prostitutes did claim me as her son-a certain Theomachus, or Fighter against

God, being (she said) my sire. Soon went she in the way of all that stand in my path.

"Then came my wanderings-Egypt, Asia, Gaul, Hispania, Rome, all the varied corners of this mundane universe. For a time a maker and seller of foul images, a hired and willing assassin, a priest in many temples, here and yon; a delator unto Cæsar; the chief delator and accuser of all good; and now-thanks to the interest and manners of myself, a companion of the Prince, even Cæsar, Lord of all this World."

He went and opened the door, and looked out into the court, thinking he had heard secret footsteps. But all was silent and devoid of motion-saving one great, sliding star, which went down out of the zenith and into an unfathomable gloom.

The man shuddered, and went within again.

"Thou, O Christ, sometimes I love thee." So he mused. “But thou art the Ancient of Days. A tyrant! Wilt thou brook a friendship? No; thou art too solitary! Wouldst thou go forth with me in a bout at drinking? Nay-not a companion. Then to thyself, and I Hast thou made a perfect universe, having the power? No. It is so full of error and wrong I laugh always at it and at thee. Yea, in thy face I tell thee thy work was not good. And thine image! Thou madest man in thine own image-laughter of Satan. What is man?

"Hadst thou not power upon thy side, O Ancient of Days, I say it plainly unto thee But no! I will up and down in the streets of the world. Here a word, there a syllable! How I hate Mostly I hate the Jew. Also Christopherus and his kind. What about the Jew? I had nearly forgotten thee, Jew.

"Why dost thou prosper, contemptible Simon of Cyrene, man of little talent, fool, enthusiast, ape? Thine indefinite and unapproachable tyrant, Jehovah, doth He ever and again renew thy strength? Canst thou not wear out, even when illimitable woes are placed upon thee? And why, Jehovah, dost thou sit upon thy solitary throne, creating world after world, constellation after constellation, universe after universe? Art thou not weary of time and space, which flow forever from thine infinite, unreasonable bosom? Why dost thou create new streams of beings, whose happiest lot in universes like these were only to die, never to live again.

"And yet thou makest them to live again!

"Now, as to thee, O Jew. I did tempt thy father, Shem, and cause his fearful downfall, and that of his father before him also. For lo! I am older than a many believe. And thee, O Simon of

Cyrene, thee I tempted both in Egypt by Emah, and again (when I knew thee better) in old Petra, where I had thee. And then, in Palestine-thou didst tempt thyself. Then again, when thou hadst been fully castigated (by thy Lord) away from all images forever, in the belly of the Babylonia, then didst thou make for thyself, being returned to Canaan, yet a substitute for images, and didst worship the foolish multiplications of thy law. 'Shall a man be justified if he do eat of an egg that was laid upon the Sabbath?' Now by the gods. of laughter! And, in these later days, thou makest yet another idol out of thy fear of Christianity: thou dost worship that fear.

"Thou bearest the cross

He stood by a pillar and leaned on it, lost in gloomy recollections. He pulled a silken cord. A gong rang, a far door opened, and there appeared, walking down the scarlet stretches of the room, that man he had sent in the morning after yet another man, to slay him. He said to the man, when that he had come close up: "Knowest thou Simon of Cyrene?" "Yea, Lord, I know him." "Then-" He leaned close over and whispered, saying, at the close: "Now go.' Sarcogenes crieth, when the man was well away: "May his arms wither; his Jewish heart melt; his bones be crumbling wax; his reason totter; yea and fall into nothing, and his soul perish in the fires of Gehenna. Curse thou him, O Satan, in the name of all evil.”

His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, and he kept conversing with some imaginary presence at which he vainly shook his daggered fist from time to frequent time. "In sin and craft and sorrow hast thou worked, O Simon of Cyrene, yea and in worse sorrow, sin, and cunning thou shalt die."

CHAPTER XLIII

THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE

MEANTIME, in the atrium of Simon, peace had settled down, and Simon's clients had got their sportulæ and gone. And Simon had hearkened to the complaints of a many of his servants, and settled their morepart foolish grievances. And all the while he had kept the tail of his eye upon the man whose face was muffled with a bandage-all but his strange, sweet eyes. At length he saw that that shambling person was working nearer and nearer to the exit.

Cried Simon, "Why camest thou in hither, sirrah? Was it, thou mightest torment me?"

The man began to run. But servants catched him, and brought him to the lord of the house.

"Strip off thy bandage," said the Master.

The man groaned, lifted not his hand.

Then bade the Master his servants to take the bandage off.

This they did, and there stood before them all-a man without a face.

Looked Simon of Cyrene upon the man during long moments, for the face was a char, a red, cicatricial mask of shapelessness. But, in time, the eyes spake to him; for there was in their depths the idle blueness of a summer sky, yet a grayish earnestness also, and love. At length the Master: "It may have been in a dream I saw thee, O strange man, as thou standest there even now by my dais. Or ere this minute have I seen thee so. And behold! from the beginning of time it hath been decreed I should look upon thee as thou standest there for who can avoid the sentence of the Almighty?”

"I chose to be here," said the man. "It was my own free will that bade me to come.

"But I chose not," said Simon; "yet I am quite as near unto thee as thou—”

At this, the tuneful tone of the old slave by the water clock brake in, both solemn and sweet: "Time, the mysterious gift, is fast a-going; yet there are happy, happy hours that are still to be."

"Thou didst choose?" said Simon.

"I chose." The man without a face did not quite look at the Master, and he gazed not, either, at any of the others round about. Then there came confusion into the mind of Simon, confusion and many disorderly images, for he tried to remember if ever he had beheld this strangest man before. Some of the pictures were near and some distant, some clearly seen, some only hinted: others were mere mists or shadows which one mist will cast upon another. Christopherus? Lampadephorus? Amahnah? Glimpses, hints, echoes, suggestions-nothing.

The man said again, "I chose." And the Master noted that the voice was husky and a little trembling.

"He saith he would be as a servant to thee, O Simon, perchance thy steward also-on a future day," said some of them around the Master.

"What wouldst thou do?" asked Simon of Cyrene. "Rather, what canst thou?"

"Try," said the man without a face.