64 The Jew said in spirit, "She is mine, for she saw me a-fighting, and I fought as never man hath fought ere now. She is very beautiful. The Lord bless her and me."

But when he had come anigh the door, she cried: "Thy God is a coward. Get hence. He is not my God, and enter thou shalt not here."

Simon would have pressed upon her and upon the people round about them somewhat of his virtues in the battle, asking if none that were present had seen him in the fight.

Now Krieg was a-minded to listen, but Drugi-thing, the priest, advancing, said: "There is always, puissant monarch, one sure way whereby to tell a wolf which is masquerading as a man. Either some portion of his body's skin is a-wanting, or else there are runes burnt in the skin of his forehead." And he would have lifted back the ringlets of the Jew, but Simon suffered him not.

And the Jew said unto them all, "Ye have had my swords, the two of them, and I your tolerance. Hael and farewell!"

So he departed.

Yet he remained in the confines of the Saxons for many days, knowing not whither to go. Time and time again, he asked for land, whereon he might dig out the humblest living, yet was ever refused.

And he wandered among the Chauci, and the Angrivarii, the Semnones, the Bructeri, the Marsi and the Chatti. And he was turned away at many doors, and at others he entered in, but only on sufferance. Nowhere would they give, or sell, him any land.

Then fared he forth from the marches of the Germans and into far Sarmatia, yet there also would they suffer him to have no land, neither an ell nor an inch. But, instead, they entreated him shamefully, so that he barely escaped with his life. And he came back and wandered in Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhaetia, likewise in the country of the Vindelici. And everywhere said he to all, "Let me, I pray thee, have just a little land. For I have no home. I am a shepherd by birth, and would mind my sheep. I will repay thee abundantly. And thou shalt have good cause to bless the day when I did come among you and first did lift my shepherd's crook up." But they said to him everywhere, "Thou? A Jew! Fah!"

He went then into the Hyperborean regions, yea and farther still. And yet would they nowhere either give him or yet sell unto him any land. Neither spot for home nor yard for sheep gave they unto him or in anywise sold unto him.

Then, at length, he said within himself: "I have wandered long enough in obscure places, and asked enough in vain for land. Am I

not a coward that I go not unto a mighty city? Are not rings and amber in the city, as well as in the country, yea and great gems also, the which a man might hide within his person against that time when he should need them for a quick escape?" He began to remember how Apodoter, the captain of the Persis, he that had brought unto him rescue from Mastix and from the belly of the Babylonia, how this man had straitly advised him to leave the shepherd life and to be as a merchant.

"Thou a shepherd! Thou live in obscure places!

"What canst thou as shepherd?

"Be a merchant of a great city. Let thy caravans be as the flights of birds, thy ships upon the sea as flocks of eagles."

So had Apodoter admonished him.

He also remembered the very delectable lust for gold that had grown up in his heart as he labored in the Mines of Cæsar, and again at the house of Avaritius.

Tenfold greater now, because of the increasing opposition made against him, grew his hunger for money and for power and, by these, for safety.

So at last his eyes were opened. All these wanderings in obscure places had been as a school to him. But now the road-his road—in life, lay straight before him. The city, the city! Why should he longer fear the Mines when he should have made a friend of Cæsar, the which he should surely do? The people, the moving crowds, the smells, the inspiriting noises, the cosmopolitan contest which at last he saw belonged of nature, therefore of right, unto him, even Simon of Cyrene! Commerce, profit, money-everlasting peace!

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

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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.'

"A man of energy, I'll be bound."

"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