" said Ben-Hur, "my friends will require me, perhaps, in the
procession."

"Procession!" exclaimed Simonides. "Does he travel in state?"

Ben-Hur saw the argument in mind.

"He brings twelve men with him, fishermen, tillers of the soil,
one a publican, all of the humbler class; and he and they make
their journeys on foot, careless of wind, cold, rain, or sun.
Seeing them stop by the wayside at nightfall to break bread or
lie down to sleep, I have been reminded of a party of shepherds
going back to their flocks from market, not of nobles and kings.
Only when he lifts the corners of his handkerchief to look at some
one or shake the dust from his head, I am made known he is their
teacher as well as their companion--their superior not less than
their friend.

"You are shrewd men," Ben-Hur resumed, after a pause. "You know
what creatures of certain master motives we are, and that it has
become little less than a law of our nature to spend life in eager
pursuit of certain objects; now, appealing to that law as something
by which we may know ourselves, what would you say of a man who
could be rich by making gold of the stones under his feet, yet is
poor of choice?"

"The Greeks would call him a philosopher," said Iras.

"Nay, daughter," said Balthasar, "the philosophers had never the
power to do such thing."

"How know you this man has?"

Ben-Hur answered quickly, "I saw him turn water into wine."

"Very strange, very strange," said Simonides; "but it is not so
strange to me as that he should prefer to live poor when he could
be so rich. Is he so poor?"

"He owns nothing, and envies nobody his owning. He pities the
rich. But passing that, what would you say to see a man multiply
seven loaves and two fishes, all his store, into enough to feed
five thousand people, and have full baskets over? That I saw the
Nazarene do."

"You saw it?" exclaimed Simonides.

"Ay, and ate of the bread and fish."

"More marvellous still," Ben-Hur continued, "what would you say of
a man in whom there is such healing virtue that the sick have but
to touch the hem of his garment to be cured, or cry to him afar?
That, too, I witnessed, not once, but many times. As we came out
of Jericho two blind men by the wayside called to the Nazarene,
and he touched their eyes, and they saw. So they brought a palsied
man to him, and he said merely, 'Go unto thy house,' and the man
went away well. What say you to these things?"

The merchant had