thirty years later, under rule of the factions, the Holy City
was torn to pieces; it was quite as great in numbers, as fanatical
and bloodthirsty; boiled and raved, and had in it exactly the same
elements--servants, camel-drivers, marketmen, gate-keepers, gardeners,
dealers in fruits and wines, proselytes, and foreigners not proselytes,
watchmen and menials from the Temple, thieves, robbers, and the myriad
not assignable to any class, but who, on such occasions as this,
appeared no one could say whence, hungry and smelling of caves
and old tombs--bareheaded wretches with naked arms and legs,
hair and beard in uncombed mats, and each with one garment the
color of clay; beasts with abysmal mouths, in outcry effective
as lions calling each other across desert spaces. Some of them
had swords; a greater number flourished spears and javelins;
though the weapons of the many were staves and knotted clubs,
and slings, for which latter selected stones were stored in
scrips, and sometimes in sacks improvised from the foreskirts
of their dirty tunics. Among the mass here and there appeared
persons of high degree--scribes, elders, rabbis, Pharisees with
broad fringing, Sadducees in fine cloaks--serving for the time as
prompters and directors. If a throat tired of one cry, they invented
another for it; if brassy lungs showed signs of collapse, they set
them going again; and yet the clamor, loud and continuous as it
was, could have been reduced to a few syllables--King of the Jews!
Room for the King of the Jews!--Defiler of the Temple!--Blasphemer
of God!--Crucify him, crucify him! And of these cries the last one
seemed in greatest favor, because, doubtless, it was more directly
expressive of the wish of the mob, and helped to better articulate
its hatred of the Nazarene.

"Come," said Simonides, when Balthasar was ready to proceed--"come,
let us forward."

Ben-Hur did not hear the call. The appearance of the part of
the procession then passing, its brutality and hunger for life,
were reminding him of the Nazarene--his gentleness, and the many
charities he had seen him do for suffering men. Suggestions beget
suggestions; so he remembered suddenly his own great indebtedness
to the man; the time he himself was in the hands of a Roman
guard going, as was supposed, to a death as certain and almost as
terrible as this one of the cross; the cooling drink he had at the
well by Nazareth, and the divine expression of the face of him who
g