of an enormous spider-web. There he sat, red-eyed and watchful, features (which were more like those of Alukah than his own) distorted in lust for gain, full-bodied, ready at a moment's notice to pull the threads which ran to suffering flies-Egyptians, Spaniards, Germans, Gauls, and so on. Again he was shown worshipping a golden calf. Beneath the picture: "Simon of Cyrene. He hath never quit it."

Yet again he was pictorially united with Cæsar himself, the Ruler of All This World, and A Man Most Jealous of His Absolute Power. There sate Cæsar on his lofty throne, while, down before him in the dust, Simon of Cyrene, a-grovelling, was handing up a bag entitled "Pennies of the Poor." Near by, a disconsolate woman and her children wept wretchedly. Sometimes he himself was shown upon the throne, while Cæsar, in the guise of a beggar, grovelled before HIM, Simon. This was the picture which Simon of Cyrene dreaded most. It might have consequences.

It did, in fact, have consequences, it or something else, or many things combined. Who knows? The Jew was ruined. He went and looked at the Tiber again, and again came Nummus and Praesens Pecunia and talked with him, and rescued him, and said unto him: "Why goest thou not into the Trans-Tiber? It is there thou belongest, there with thy people. Keep thou to thyself."

So into the Trans-Tiber he went (this Simon of the ever-returning energies) into the Trans-Tiber, that earliest of the absolute ghettos which the world has known. After all, he was an outcast, a waif, a straw upon Life's current. At least, he should be among his own people, in the ghetto, and should always be on hand of Sabbath eves. Anyway, what difference which way he went, or where he lived?

All possible difference, O Simon of Cyrene. The Lord hath need of thee in Rome, and will keep thee there, and hew thee yet a little further to His liking. He hath His own plans and purposes, He that neither slumbers nor sleeps.

So, into the ghetto, where the streets were more like damp, dark and noisome caverns than any thoroughfares of men should becaverns long drawn out and interlacing intricately and interminably. Labor, Sorrow, and Care were still beside that Simon of Cyrene in those caverns, and Pestilence also, and Hopelessness and Melancholy grievous to be borne. Here were poverty-stricken weavers, poverty-stricken tent-makers, poverty-stricken dealers in purples, butchers, tavern-keepers, dealers in keys and locks at second hand, even poets and men of letters (who are always and everywhere deeply stricken and in poverty) as well as preachers, lawyers and

theologians. Above all, here were Alukah, the Horse-leech, and Parush, the formalist, Keseel, the stupid one, Na-aph, the adulterer, and Gannab, the thief. And Simon hated these for what they were, yet loved them mightly also, for that they were sons of Abraham, and, by the blood, his brethren.

After a little struggle to carry on business in the ghetto only, he went forth again, of certain days, to the Gentile portion of the city. With a little frame for fruits about neck and shoulders, and a jingling bell in right hand, he hawked about the streets and alleys of the Viminal Hill, the Vicus Sceleratus, eke the dark and dangerous passages of the Subura. And each and every of the man's competitors would sell but a single kind of fruit, crying: "Apricots, apricots!" Or, as it might be, "Peaches, Peaches!" But Simon made an innovation, loading up with different varieties of fruits, and then shouting: "Apricots, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, gooseberries, currants and raspberries! Plums, cherries, pears, citrons, oranges, apples, olives, grapes, figs, melons, lemons, and every other sort of fruit that is known in Cæsar's dominions."

The people laughed and scoffed and crowded clamorously about him, while all the other hucksters were silently ignored. And lo and behold! the people discovered that the cries of the Jew were true, that he had each kind of fruit which there was in the whole confines of Cæsar. And they bought of the fruits freely, merely because they were tickled, and they paid good prices, even for the same unreason. Then, when the other hucksters and hawksters had played at the same little trick and it began to grow old and common, behold! this inventive Simon of Cyrene had got for himself some other device.

On a day, as he went along, crying: "Any old rags or bones!Rags, bones, bottles, or bits of unwritten parchment?" he beheld, suddenly, in the borders of the Subura, a mighty and beauti ful house. Standing before the house, who but Neomathes? Now, Neomathes endeavored not to know the humble Jew. But Simon, asking him whose the house was, found that the place had pertained unto Lampadephorus-that noble and learned Greek, who, much declining in circumstances, had become a simple servant unto Cæsar, and, finally, perished.

Said Simon in his soul, "O Lampadephorus, my teacher! I will live within thy mansion on a day! This much I promise thee, 0 Lampadephorus, my dear teacher!"

And he went on (for Neomathes had disappeared) crying: "Rags! Any old rags Rags, bones? Any yellow rags!" For behold, the

man was buying rags of every color, but he called for yellow rags alone, simply in order that people might ask (as they did) "What is the special value of a yellow rag?" And thus he got their rags of whatsoever size or shape or color-and came thereby a trifle nearer to the ownership of his old master's house.

On a day, he was called to the palace of Seneca, the moral philosopher, who was first very kind to him, then interrogated him closely concerning the moral teachings of the Jews.

And Seneca sent him away as were he a king, and Simon was greatly heartened by this, that he had a friend.

And the Jew regarded neither cold nor hunger, nor nakedness nor peril nor sword, but sought out gold, and the power that is with gold, interminably, longing especially for the house of Lampadephorus. Whenever a person offended him, however deeply, he managed to shuffle the matter aside and pass on to other things. But the man who mocked him, him and his fathers (even as Trivialis oft had done) and the rites of his religion, that man he could never forgive. And he was ever seeking to come up with that man, yet seldom finding him.

Ever he slept in the ghetto, and after a time Ophidion caused a law to be enacted whereby he must so sleep. Yet, here in the dense corporeal gloom of the right bank of the river, life had many a compensation for the Jew. No drunken husband ever came into this quarter of the city to beat his wife and little ones to death. The frequent divorces of left-bank society were spoken of by these mothers in Israel only with wondering and awe. Whenever a sorrow befell in any Jewish family, it was felt in the bosom of all of them, was multiplied ten thousand fold and shared with a holy tenderness. Even Alukah was known to give to secret charities. Amid the mere physical gloom of the Trans-Tiber, in fact, the domestic and spiritual life of the children of Abraham shone like a great binary star.

So, for a time, our Simon of Cyrene continued to live in the ghetto, not in a pleasant apartment truly, but in a cramped and noisome room-this man of volcanic passions and earth-shivering energies. But, in that cramped and foul-smelling corner-what super-Solomonic visions! From a life of hard-headed, practical money-getting, of diplomacy, of lithe evasions of petty or powerful attacks, of escapes from tricks and traps and cunningest pit-falls (set either by Jealousy or Hate) he would retire at night into this secret den, thence to retire once more and yet more deeply, into the magnificent chambers of his own soul. And, in those chambers, he would stalk and brood, like king of kings, until at length there would come to him such bright,

improbable phantasmagoria as neither poppy nor mandragora hath ever conferred on any of Gentile dreaming.

And mostly he saw himself in the house of Lampadephorus, and Seneca coming to visit him. The words that they said and the thoughts they experienced- Neither poppy nor mandragora!

Once again, on a day, had Simon of Cyrene achieved the toppling tragedy of success. But, yet again, came messenger after messenger with tidings of misfortune. And at length came one with news of further losses, both in ships and caravans: the last of all his ships, the last of all his caravans.

"All? All? What sayest thou? 'All'? All gone? All? I am nothing but the shadow of a dream! Revenge! Ambition! Nothing!"

And he cast dust on his head, and fell down to the ground, and grovelled there like a worm that is wholly lost.

But, in the midst of his deep downheartedness, he chanced to look upward. And there he beheld Cæsar, the Lord of All This World, smiling down upon him.

For a moment the Jew could not believe the wonder of that smile. Cæsar was smiling at him-at him, even Simon of Cyrene.

Then Cæsar stooped, and lifted him up, and embraced him and kissed him upon the mouth most fervently. "Thou art very dear to me," he said, "O Cyrenian Simon."

CHAPTER XLI

LIFT UP THINE HEART, O JOB BAR-JOB: THOU ART ON THE Path to THE STARS

SLAVES by numerous water-clocks had already called the gallicinium (or time when cocks begin to crow) and now in the streets before the houses of the great, there had begun to form the customary throngs of suitors, clients, visitors, idlers, fools. One of the largest of the multitudes had got itself together a trifle earlier than the rest in the wide and well-paved space before a massive, brass-doored domus which stood on the boundary between the Subura and the Carinæ.

"Simon of Cyrene is a prominent man," quoth one among the

many.

"Thou sayest truly, Mobilis. But thinkest thou that his prominence will endure? Is it not like to a frost before the shining sun of Cæsar?"

"It will not endure, O Lividulus."

"Sayest thou," inquired another, "that the prominence of Simon of Cyrene will not endure?"

"Yea, for Sarcogenes is against him."

"But," said the other, a person of middling height and weight and very common manners, and whose name, as it seemed, was Vulgus. "Simon of Cyrene is much more powerful than is Sarcogenes, for he hath more weight with Cæsar."

Now, at this moment, who but Sarcogenes himself should be faring along in his litter? And he heard the saying of Vulgus, to wit that Simon of Cyrene was more powerful than he, Sarcogenes, and for this, that he was weightier than he in the mind of Cæsar. And although the multitude shouted lustily, "Long life to Sarcogenes, Comes Principis! Hail, Sarcogenes!" still the man of evil was heavy of heart for that which he had heard. Yet, too, he waved a greeting to the multitude, especially Vulgus and Mobilis, and, smiling, passed

on.

"The Jew will not long endure," said then, also, Repetitio―"but, by the shades of Hercules, a fight!"

And so it was, for a certain Timidus had tickled the malformed ear of a giant named Pugilus, and the giant was busy to vanquish him. The which he promptly accomplished, and sent him down the manhole into a sewer.

Then placed Pugilus the lid over the manhole, and all the crowd did laugh right merrily.

But after a time, there came from another direction the selfsame Timidus, reeking with filth. So the crowd did laugh again and hold its noses.

And Timidus went his own way.

Then said Mobilis unto Vulgus, "Behold! this Timidus is well familiar with the streets and passages of Nether Rome."

"Those ways and passages be the resort, full often, of the timid," said Vulgus. "I have hidden therein mine own sweet self-when a many were after me."

"So, too, have I," acknowledged Mobilis. "The blackness, the stench, and the rats! I saw one corpse. Pah! A man must know his way therein or he cometh not again out.-I knew this Simon of Cyrene when he lived in the Regio Judeorum-over yonder. He had not a penny."

"Now he is a Roman citizen and a prominent man.-Will his gates never open?"

"Yea, and more," said one that was called Defectus (A Failure)