ple, not caring whether it was polluted by
the presence of an adulterer, only thinking of the great profit he could
make out of the man's sins, differing in no wise in this from the
priests and sacristans.

Jesus should never have gone to the Temple nor come to Jerusalem, Joseph
said. But in this Nicodemus could not agree with him, for if Jesus were
the Messiah his mission was nothing less than to free Jerusalem from the
Roman yoke. But he should have brought a larger body of disciples with
him--some thousands, instead of a few hundreds--not enough to bring
about the abolition of the Temple, which, according to Nicodemus, was
the Galilean's project--one more difficult to accomplish than he thinks
for. The Romans support the Temple, he cried, because the Temple divides
us. I say it myself, Sadducee though I am.

It was these last words that proved to Joseph that the ringlets and
bracelets did not comprise the whole of this young man's soul, and he
was moved forthwith to confide the story of his father's sickness to
him, dwelling on all its consequences: he had not been elected an
apostle, and Jesus consequently had no one by to tell him that he must
not speak of the abolition of the law in Jerusalem. But if he did not
come to incite the people against the Temple, for what did he come?
Nicodemus asked. You've heard him preach in Galilee, tell me who he is,
and in what does his teaching consist?--a direct question that prompted
Joseph to relate his associations with the Essenes, Banu, John, the
search for Jesus in Egypt and among the Judean hills--a long story I'm
afraid it is, Joseph mentioned apologetically to Nicodemus, who begged
him to omit no detail of it. Nicodemus sat with his eyes fixed on Joseph
while Joseph told of the discovery of Jesus in Galilee among his
father's fishermen; and as if to excuse the almost immodest interest
awakened in Nicodemus, Joseph murmured that the story owed nothing to
his telling of it; he was telling it as plainly as it could be told for
a purpose; Nicodemus must judge it fairly. Resuming his narrative,
Joseph related the day spent in the forest and Jesus' interpretation of
the prophecies. Nicodemus cried: he is the stone cut by no hand out of
the mountain; the idol shall fall, and the stone that felled it shall
grow as big as a mountain and fill the whole earth.

CHAP. XVII.

As they sat talking the servant brought in a letter which, he said, has
just arrived from Galilee