"A hundred gold pieces for the Son of G.o.d's coat!" But it was high time that the dealer made himself scarce, for the people of Jerusalem were enraged at a man who wanted to do business in presence of the dying Saviour. The good, pious citizens of Jerusalem!

Not a High Priest was to be seen. They had all gone away. The hoa.r.s.e-voiced Rabbi was still there, reciting Psalms aloud to the dying man.

"Stop that!" someone shouted at him. "You killed Him."

"We've killed Him? Who do you mean?" asked the Rabbi with well-feigned innocence.

"Why you, you expounders of the Scriptures, you brought Him to His death; it was you, and you alone!"

The Rabbi replied very seriously: "Think, my friend, what you are saying. Can you prove this charge before the dread Jehovah? We expounders of the Law brought Him to His death! Every one knows who condemned Him. It was the foreigners. They have ever been the ruin of our nation! Every one knows who crucified Him at the desire of the people."

It was high time that he should defend himself. The voices grew ever louder: It was the High Priests who had goaded on the people and judges! They are guilty----

"Silence! He still lives!"

All looks were centred on the cross.

Jesus turned His head to the crowd and muttered in His weakness: "I am thirsty! I am thirsty!"

The captain ordered a sponge to be dipped in vinegar, and reached up to Him on a stick so that the dying man might sip the moisture.

A young woman with her hair flowing loose lay among the rocks. She kneeled, and, supporting her elbows on the ground, wailed softly: "O Saviour, Saviour! My sins!"

He looked once again at His dear ones. Then He lifted His head quickly and uttered a cry to Heaven: "Father, receive My soul! My Father! Do not forsake Me!" He looked upwards, gazed at the heavens with wide-opened eyes, then His head dropped and fell on His breast.

John sank to the ground, covering his face with his hands. All was over!

The crowd was almost motionless. They stood and stared, and their faces were white. The town walls were dun-coloured, the shrubs were grey, the young buds were pale and closed.

A l.u.s.treless sun stood in the sky like a moon, and its shadows were ghostly. Terrified rooks and bats flew around, and hovered about the cross in this horrible twilight. Rocks on the hills broke away, and skulls rolled down the slope. As for the people, they seemed to have lost the power of speech, they stood dumb and looked at one another.

"Something has happened," said an old man to himself.

The crowd began to move, uncertainly at first, then with more animation and noise.

"What has happened?" asked a bystander.

"My friend, what has happened now has thrown the world off its balance.

I do not know what it is, but it has thrown the world off its balance.

If it is not the end of the world, then it must be its beginning."

"Inri! Inri!" shouted the voice of a shuddering lunatic.

Then there was a general shout. "What is it? It is dark! I've never been so terrified in all my days."

"Look at the cross! It's growing longer! Higher, ever higher, higher!

I can't see the top of it! It's a giant cross!"

Then came news. "A pillar has fallen in the Temple. The curtain of the Holy of Holies has been rent in twain. Outside, in the cemetery, the tombs have opened and the dead wrapped in their white shrouds have risen from them."

"The end of the world!"

"The beginning of the world!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"JESUS CHRIST!" rustles through the crowd like the spring breezes over the desert. The words sound through the whole of Jerusalem, they sound throughout the broad land of Judaea, these words of all power. They kindle a fire which has lighted up the universe until the present day.

His dear and faithful ones a.s.sembled at the cross where the dead Master hung. There are more of them than there were yesterday, among them even some who had shouted in the night: "Crucify Him!" The disciples stood there silent, making no lamentation. Mary, the mother, stood by John's side, and Magdalen by him. A marvellous quiet had come over their hearts, so that they asked themselves:

"How can this be? Is not our Jesus dead?"

"My brothers," said Peter, "for me it is as if He still lives."

"He in us, and we in Him," said John.

Only Bartholomew was restless. Hesitatingly he asked James if he had not also understood Him to say: "Father, do not forsake Me." But James was thinking of another word and of another of the brothers. He went away from the cross to seek out Judas. He would tell him that in dying the Master had forgiven His enemies, he would tell Judas of the Saviour's legacy: Mercy for sinners!

Since the early hours of the morning when the Master had been condemned to death in the Governor's house, Judas had wandered aimlessly about.

He tried to surrender himself to the captain as a false witness and a spy, as one who sold men for gold. He was laughed at and left alone.

Then he went to one of the High Priests to swear that his statements had not been so meant; that his Master was no evil-doer, but rather the Messenger of G.o.d, who would destroy His enemies. He had not intended to betray Him, and he would return the traitor's pay to the Pharisee.

The latter shrugged his shoulders, saying that it was no concern of his; he had given no money and would receive none. Then Judas threw the silver pieces at his feet and hurried away. His long hair waved in the wind. He slunk along behind the town walls in order to get in advance of the procession and let himself be impaled at Golgotha instead of the Master. But he was too late; he heard the strokes of the hammer. He went down into the valley of Kedron. Not a soul was to be seen there, every one had gone to the place of execution. Judas was thrown aside, even by the gaping crowd, abandoned as a traitor.

Frightful, inconceivable, was the thing he had done! Alas! why had He not revealed Himself? He stood patiently, gentle as a lamb before the judges, and bore the cross as no one had ever done before. Could that be it after all? Not to strive against one's enemies, to suffer one's fate as the will of G.o.d, to lay down one's life for the tidings of the Father--was that glory the mission of the Messiah? "And I? I expected something else of Him. And I made a mistake, greater than all the mistakes of all the fools put together. And now I am thrust out of the fellowship of righteous men, and thrust out of the fellowship of sinners. There is pardon for the murderer, but not for the traitor.

He Himself said: Better that such a man had never been born. Others dare to atone for their sins in caves of the desert, dare to expiate their crimes with their blood--but I am cast out of all Love and all expiation for ever and ever." Such were the endless laments of Judas.

He wandered to and fro behind walls and among bushes; he hid himself in caves all the day long. Then suddenly it flashed on him: "It is unjust. I believed in Him. I believed in Him so implicitly. Is such trust thrown away? Can the Divine Man cast aside such a trust? No, it is not so, it is not so!"

His fate was decided by this shattering of his last hope. When it was dark he slunk past a farm. Ropes hung over the walls; he pulled one off and hurried to the mountain. The sun was setting behind Jerusalem, over the heights, like a huge, red, l.u.s.treless pane of gla.s.s. Once more for the last time his eye sought the light, the departing light.

And a cross stood out large and dark against the red circle; the tall cross at Golgotha right in the centre of the gloomy sun. Gigantic and dark it towered against the crimson background--horrible! The despairing heart of Judas could not endure it. With a savage curse he went up to a fig-tree. James was behind him. He had seen Judas climb the slope, had waved his cloak and cried to him: "It is I, James.

Brother, I come from the Master. Listen, brother, mercy for sinners.

Mercy for all who repent. Listen." Almost breathless he reached the fig-tree. Arms and legs hung down lifeless, the mouth drawn in, the tongue protruding from the lips. The body swung to and fro in the evening breeze. The wretched man had not waited for the Saviour's pardon.

Towards the end of that same day the old man of the East, who came from the desert where great thoughts dwell, the weary old man who called down twice the curse of everlasting unrest on the grandson of Uriah, went to a stonecutter in Jerusalem. He thought it time to order his tombstone. And on it were to be cut the letters "I.N.R.I."

"Did you also belong to the Nazarene?" asked the stonecutter.

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because it is the inscription on His cross."

"It is the inscription on my grave," said the old man, "and it means: 'IN NIRVANA REST I.'"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI