the cross! Oh God! Oh Adonai! Why should son of Abraham be servant to Ophidion? But-was not Ophidion a servant unto the Lord? Yea, though he, Ophidion, knew it not. The man of the cross suffered himself to think upon this thing no further, but, with a proud despair, began to recall (as often he had done before in this very viridarium) all the skeptical philosophers (and that was a many) whose works he had aforetime read, as, for example, Lucretius, Enesidemus, etc. Then he said, "I am a fool that I believe on anything whatever. Yea, I will not believe, and I do not. Two things exist, they two alone-Cæsar and I. And I must escape from Cæsar. So much is plain, no more.

"Why! Now I do begin to breathe easily again. So fearful had I become that I had fallen into an idolatrous anti-idolatry. Shall I make of my fear of thee, O Christ, an idol the which I shall worship? Have I not been doing this very thing? So foolish had I become! and, at bottom, truly for this, that I had believed on God, and had thought that a man might know the things that are to be hereafter. But man knoweth nothing, even of the things of now.

"This is the simple truth. Therefore will I believe it utterly, and the truth shall make me free."

Now, deep in the heart of the Jew (as in the heart of every normal man, but not so strong and abiding) was a wish to see God, to behold Him even as a brother, whom one might, indeed, take by the hand and kiss. "Oh that One might come with supernatural tenderness and with supernatural power, even as Socrates and Plato did predict must be!" At the bottom of his soul, it was this feeling (righteous enough in itself) which, by a strange and yet most natural excess, had made of Simon, both in Egypt and in Petra, also in the Land of Canaan, an idolater veritable. This, too, by a strange reversal, or inversion, of thought, had made of the man an idolater also since his coming into Rome, and for this, that (as he himself had plainly seen) it had caused a fear of his own possible reception of Jesus, until, in his heart, he worshipped not the very Lord, but that fear itself and that hatred of Christ. And now, as his love of Adonai and wish to see Him in the flesh was tapping at his heart's door, he closed down even the window, shutting and fastening it, and making an absolute darkness therein, and saying to himself: "There is nothing at all that can be without, therefore none knocketh." So again he hath an idol, this Simon of Cyrene, the idol called Atheism. Poor Simon of Cyrene!-Simon which loveth the Lord better than doth any other man alive. Incurable idolater also he, and solely for this strange reason, that so very much he doth love God.

And Simon indeed suffered.

Not without suffering could Simon of Cyrene have said to himself, "There is no God."

After a little, he found (and was greatly surprised) that he had not quieted the great question in the least, but was wondering about it again, and tossing it like a madman's ball, to and fro, in his mind.

There came to him the recollection of what the Chazzan, what the Archisynagogus, what Jeezer and Morah and Jehovah-Jireh had said unto him as about Jesus. With a pang, he suddenly cast these things all out from his heart, crying again: "I have said I would not so much as believe upon Jehovah. Why, then, ponder, or anywise recall, the prophecies about His Son ?"

So he put the whole question by, saying: "I will see to this at my greater leisure, for unto some certain conclusion must I arrive." But all at once he found that he was reflecting again upon Christianity. And after a time, his imagination stopped once more.

There was a strange, uncertain region (as he saw) which it could not cross, being under, as it seemed, a heavy compulsion and restraint. Sometimes again, he believed that he could cross that region -but only with superhuman aid.

And a sudden homesickness, a sickness for the Land of his Fathers, of Canaan, descended upon him like a leaden cloud. "Were I only in Canaan," thought he, "the troubles and the trials of my life would surely and forever cease.

But he swept this thought, also, aside, saying: "Two things exist alone-Cæsar and I. And I must make peace with Cæsar." So that now, in his soul, which was verging unto dissolution (but he knew that not) from his body, and which, as it were, should have been transformed into a very temple prepared for Adonai, there grew up merely thoughts and plans for that body's safety and fleshly success.

But again he began, spite of himself, to think of God, and of God in connection with him, Simon. He reviewed his whole life, calling up before him Leah, which is also Berith, likewise Temunah of the South, and Emah the Egyptian, and Gillul, the Petran, and Abaddone and her brother Shikkuts, and Superbus and Superbia, and all the others of the seven strange peoples that were dead and dust (he thought) these very many years. Then he became aware again that a nightingale was calling to its mate outside the grove, a little later that the treadmill in the near-by court was creaking still, creaking and creaking steadfastly. He straightened slowly up, and stood upon his feet, for he found that he himself had gotten into the bent, tread

mill attitude. "Small wonder," quoth he. He raised his arms, in the fashion of a giant cross.

In this strange posture he stood, devoid of motion, for a long time, looking like some one that posed and passed from dream unto idler dream, but, in reality, his was a wounded soul naked, out of space and time, battling against Jesus.

He let fall his arms, and passed back into the world again, coming outside the circle of the cypresses. Then he paced the walks of the lonely court, marching restlessly from closed door to closed door and from closed door back unto closed door again, till, in his teeming brain, he had formed highly thought out plans-plans, that is to say, both as concerning great changes for himself and his familia and also as concerning Ophidion.

CHAPTER XLIX

AND IT CAME TO PASS

CONATUS, meanwhile, threaded the many courts sombrely, seeing to it that all went well in the house of him that had borne, and still bore, the cross. Then, once more in the atrium, he heard his Master's rich, mellifluous voice coming nearer and nearer, ringing out as in the time before the Trial, hymning the great joys of the synagogue.

Conatus ran up by the stairway at the side wall of the court, and so to his cubiculum. He cast his olden garments off, and put on fresher, and leaped and capered like a young he-goat, and put his fists up in the manner of pugilists, and battered first this, then that, airy and insubstantial opponent-as, to wit, Potus, Ebrius, Tepor, Cessatio, Prodigus, and even Ophidion (the father of fools) himself.

Then he sate down, and indited an epistle to ChristopherusChristopherus, who had known this very long time (but Simon not at all) that Conatus and Trivialis were one and the same very man.

And, in those days, Sarcogenes, which was also Ophidion, set on foot (but by merest indirections) movements among the Christians in Rome, looking toward the conversion of Simon. He said to them he sent, "If ye get him to be a Christian, see ye unto it that he falleth away from righteousness. Teach him, in the very bosom of the Church, lust, polygamy, theft, lying, the rapine of whole provinces, fearfullest murders. Justify ye all these things by distorting the sense of the Scriptures, in especial the olden, which lendeth itself more readily to distortion in these matters than doth the new."

And Simon was driven the farther away even from the elder books themselves by these indelicate and basely founded efforts on the part of Ophidion. For he saw clearly in them Ophidion's hand. He waved the secret agents aside, saying: "Have not I a good religion? And do I trouble any of you, saying that ye should change your religious beliefs because of the things which I believe and which ye do not? Long not we, the twain of us, for the Lord in the flesh, the while thou believest that He hath come already, but I that He is still to come? And why dost thou say I bore Jesus' cross, when it is no such thing?" Every man went away, as it were sorrowing.

And Christopherus and Nea Diatheka also came often unto Simon's gates, attended both by Joy and Cheerfulness, but these were not admitted. The heart of the Jew was filled with a strange fire, and his bowels yearned for his friend and his own sons, yet would he nowise look upon either Christopherus or them. But he said, “The man is an idolater: he believeth on three gods-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Also, was he not, in a very true manner of saying, the cause of my speaking out?"

In those days, also, came to Simon's house Philautia, searching for the secret of eternal life. She said unto him, "I want not life eternal for any but myself and Cæsar. For who are others that I should look out for them a thing so precious?"

But she went away disconsolate.

And it was said for years that the reason why Cæsar's Selfishness would not remain on the side of the Jew was that she had come and looked upon him and spoken with him, and had gone away saying: "He also, like myself, is still seeking for the secret, which is yet, as he understandeth it, to be brought into the world by a certain Messiah." And when she had learned that another sect of the Jews (for so the Romans called the Christians) had declared that Jesus, already come, was the Messiah, and when, also, she had heard about a great evangelist of that sect named Christopherus, she went to him (but a long time after the trial of Simon) and inquired, saying: "Hast thou the secret of eternal life?"

He said, "Wast thou not at Simon's trial?"

She spake and answered him, "Truly I was there, but I have had so much to think over in connection with myself and Cæsar since that time that I do not rightly remember the things that were there said. Only this I do remember, to wit, that the Jew is declared by certain ones to have the secret of eternal life."

Said then Christopherus, "Both the Jew and Jesus, and, after them twain, I."

She looked in his eyes, and saw he spake truth, for she beheld the light eternal within him. She, therefore, said over and over: "Tell me the secret of eternal life." But he, each time: "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, and be humble, and follow Jesus, which is the Christ."

Then she: “I wish no happiness for others than myself, either here or elsewhere, but only for me, and for Cæsar, which is myself. But tell me thy secret of a surety, O happy man, and I will recompense thee with mountains of gold."

He: "Were I to sell the secret, then should both thou and I lose it utterly."

And she believed that he mocked her, because, by her nature, she could not understand the veritable secret of life eternal. So she went away in sore heaviness of heart and eternal despair.

But Trochus, on his part, finding out at length Christopherus, became a convert to Christianity. Much he labored by the side of Christopherus, until, indeed, he perished, being happy all the days, for that he had found the secret of life eternal.

And Trochus loved the Jew, and would have spoken unto him, but that the Jew suffered him not, partly because of the veil which was over his heart, and partly because of his great business with Cæsar.

For, in consequence of the luxury, vice and extravagance of the Court, and the many drains which were therefore made upon the peoples, and which were more than these could in any wise bear, a fearful sedition had arisen among them, and Cæsar's house was threatened, yea and his very life itself. And Simon went unto the rescue of Cæsar even as aforetime, but, on this occasion, to a far greater extent and far higher degree than ever before, pouring out in the lap of Cæsar such a treasury of gems and moneys, and of documents more precious than either, that the spirit of all the world went into a delirium of joy, and forgot himself and fell down on the floor and worshipped the Jew's money, saying: "Salvation is of the Jews." Then was Simon's heart glad. He thought: "I am safe forever." And Cæsar declared and ordained him for a comes principis, "companion of the highest."

Said Simon to himself then, "It is settled. I will complete a transaction I long have had in mind, and the plans for which I shaped on that miserable day in the viridarium, when my soul was so troubled."