might attempt to carry him off!'

'And besides, where is the use of speaking to him? You can see plainly
he will not reply.'

'To death! to death!'

'And he must himself carry his cross to his place of punishment.'

The proposition of this fresh barbarity was received with applause by
all. They led Jesus out of the guard-room, and placed the cross on one
of his bleeding shoulders. The pain was so dreadful, the weight of the
cross so heavy, that the wretched son of Mary felt his knees tremble,
and he nearly fell to the ground; but finding fresh strength in his
courage and resignation, he seemed to bear up against suffering; and,
bending beneath his burthen, he slowly commenced his march. The crowd
and escort of soldiers cried, in following him:

'Room, room, for the triumph of the King of the Jews!'

The mournful cortege put itself in motion for the place of execution,
situated beyond the Judicial Gate; quitted the rich quarter of the
temple, and pursued its way through a part of the town much less rich
and very populous; thus, as by degrees the escort penetrated the quarter
of the poor, Jesus received at least some marks of interest on their
part. Genevieve saw a great many women, standing at their doors
lamenting the fate of the young man of Nazareth; they remembered that he
was the friend of poor mothers and their children; many of those
innocents therefore sent, with their tears, kisses to the good Jesus,
whose simple and touching parables they knew by heart. But, alas! almost
at every step, vanquished by pain, crushed under the weight he carried,
Mary's son stumbled; at length his strength entirely failed him; he fell
on his knees, then on his hands, and his forehead struck the ground.

Genevieve thought him dead or expiring; she could not restrain a cry of
grief and alarm; but he was not dead. His martyrdom and agony was still
to endure. The Roman soldiers who followed him, as well as the
pharisees, cried out:

'Up, up, lazy one! you pretend to fall that you may not carry your cross
to the end?'

'You, who reproached the high priests for binding on the backs of men
burthens insupportable, but which the priests would not touch with a
finger,' said Doctor Baruch, 'you are now doing precisely as they do in
refusing to bear your cross!'

Jesus, still on his knees, and his face bent toward the ground, helped
himself to rise with his two hands, which he did with great difficulty;
then, still scarcely able to