ize the bloody harvest of vengeance.'

The Romans, exasperated by the heavenly patience of Jesus, knew not what
to think of to conquer him. Neither insults nor threats could move him,
so one of the soldiers snatched from his hand the stick he continued to
hold mechanically and broke it on his head, exclaiming,

'You will, perhaps, give some signs of life, statue of flesh and bones!'
but Jesus, having at first bowed his head beneath the blow, raised it,
casting a look of pardon on the one who had struck him. No doubt this
ineffable sweetness intimidated or embarrassed the barbarians, for one
of them, detaching his scarf, bandaged the eyes of the young man of
Nazareth, saying to him:

'O great king! thy respectful subjects are not worthy to support thy
glance!'

When Jesus had his eyes thus bandaged, the idea of a ferocious baseness
struck the mind of the Romans; one of them approached the victim, gave
him a slap in the face and said to him, bursting into a laugh:

'O great prophet! guess the name of him who has struck you.'

Then a horrible sport commenced. These robust and armed men, each struck
in turn the fettered victim, broken by so many tortures, saying to him
every time they struck him on the face:

'Can you guess this time who struck you?'

Jesus (and these were the only words that Genevieve heard him pronounce
during the whole martyrdom), Jesus said in a voice of compassion,
lifting to heaven his eyes still covered with the bandage:

'May God forgive them, they know not what they do.'

Such was the only plaint uttered, by the sufferer, and it was not even a
plaint; it was a prayer he addressed to God, imploring pardon for his
tormentors. The Romans, far from being appeased by this divine
forbearance, redoubled their violences and outrages. Some wretches were
base enough to spit in Jesus' face. Genevieve could no longer have
supported the spectacle of these enormities, even if the gods had not
put an end to it; she heard in the street a great tumult, and saw arrive
Doctor Baruch, Jonas the banker, and Caiphus the high priest. Two men in
their suite carried a heavy wooden cross, a little longer than the
height of a man. At sight of this instrument of torture, the persons
waiting outside the gate of the guard-house, and amongst whom was
Genevieve, cried in a triumphant voice:

'Here's the cross at last! here's the cross!'

'A cross quite new and worthy of a king!'

'And as a king, the Nazarene will n