to settle than
where his bones shall lie; and next time he visited the hillside Joseph
came upon rocks facing eastward, and it seemed to him that the rays of
the rising sun should fall on his sepulchre; but a few days later,
coming out of his house in great disquiet, it seemed to him he would lie
happy if his tomb were visited every evening by the peaceful rays of the
setting sun, and he asked himself how many years of life he would have
to drag through before God released him from his prison. If he wished
to die he could, for our lives are in our own hands. But he did not know
that he cared to die and, overpowered with grief, he abandoned himself
to metaphysical speculation, asking himself again if it were not true
that to be born into this world meant to pass out of one life into
another; therefore, if so, to die in this world only meant to pass into
another, a life unknown to us, for all is unknown--nothing being fixed
or permanent. We cannot bathe twice in the same river, so Heraclitus
said, but we cannot bathe even once in the same river, he added; and to
carry the master's thought a stage further was a pleasure, if any moment
of his present life could be called pleasurable. He heard these sayings
first in Alexandria, and, looking towards Jerusalem, he tried to recall
the exact words of the sage regarding the futility of sacrifice. Our
priests try, said Heraclitus, to purify themselves with blood and we
admire them, but if a filthy man were to roll himself in the mud in the
hope of cleaning himself we should think he was mad. In some such wise
Heraclitus spoke, but it seemed to Joseph he had lost something of the
spirit of the saying in too profuse wording of it. As he sought for the
original epitome he heard his name called, and awaking from his
recollections of Alexandria he looked up and saw before him a young man
whom he remembered having seen at the Sanhedrin. Nicodemus was his name;
and he remembered how the fellow had kept his eyes on him for one whole
evening, trying at various times to engage him in talk; an insistent
fellow who, despite rebuffs, had followed him into the street after the
meeting, and, refusing to be shaken off, had led the way so skilfully
that Joseph found himself at last on Nicodemus' doorstep and with no
option but to accept Nicodemus' invitation to enter. He did not like the
fellow, but not on account of his insistence; it was not his insistence
that had prejudiced him against him as m