hy should you? Let others forget
that you were a harlot, but you must remember. It is the others who
should forget as soon as possible, but you should not. Why should you?"

"But it was a sin!"

"He fears who never committed a sin, but he who has committed it, what
has he to fear? Do the dead fear death; is it not rather the living? No,
the dead laugh at the living and their fears."

Thus by the hour would they sit and talk in friendly guise, he--already
old, dried-up and misshapen, with his bulbous head and monstrous
double-sided face; she--young, modest, tender, and charmed with life as
with a story or a dream.

But time rolled by unconcernedly, while the thirty pieces of silver lay
under the stone, and the terrible day of the Betrayal drew inevitably
near. Already Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the ass's back, and
the people, strewing their garments in the way, had greeted Him with
enthusiastic cries of "Hosanna! Hosanna! He that cometh in the name of
the Lord!"

So great was the exultation, so unrestrainedly did their loving cries
rend the skies, that Jesus wept, but His disciples proudly said:

"Is not this the Son of God with us?"

And they themselves cried out with enthusiasm: "Hosanna! Hosanna! He
that cometh in the name of the Lord!"

That evening it was long before they went to bed, recalling the
enthusiastic and joyful reception. Peter was like a madman, as though
possessed by the demon of merriment and pride. He shouted, drowning all
voices with his leonine roar; he laughed, hurling his laughter at their
heads, like great round stones; he kept kissing John and James, and even
gave a kiss to Judas. He noisily confessed that he had had great fears
for Jesus, but that he feared nothing now, that he had seen the love of
the people for Him.

Swiftly moving his vivid, watchful eye, Judas glanced in surprise from
side to side. He meditated, and then again listened, and looked. Then
he took Thomas aside, and pinning him, as it were, to the wall with
his keen gaze, he asked in doubt and fear, but with a certain confused
hopefulness:

"Thomas! But what if He is right? What if He be founded upon a rock, and
we upon sand? What then?"

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"How, then, would it be with Judas Iscariot? Then I should be obliged
to strangle Him in order to do right. Who is deceiving Judas? You or he
himself? Who is deceiving Judas? Who?"

"I don't understand you, Judas. You speak very unintellige