De: ITALIAN FANTASIES
The humanitarian turn given to Yuletide by the genius of Dickens was at bottom a return from the caricature to the true concept. Dickens converted Christmas to Christianity. But over large stretches of the planet and of history it is Christianity that has been converted to Paganism, as the condition of its existence. Russia was baptized a thousand years ago, but she seems to have a duck’s back for holy water. And even in the rest of Europe upon what parlous terms the Church still holds its tenure of nominal power! What parson dares speak out in a crisis, what bishop dares flourish the _logia_ of Christ in the face of a heathen world? The old gods still govern—if they do not rule. Thor and Odin, Mars and Venus—who knows that they do not dream of a return to their ancient thrones, if, indeed, they are aware of their exile. Their shrines still await them in the forests and glades; every rock still holds an altar. And do they demand their human temples, lo! the Pantheon stands stable in Rome, the Temple of Minerva in Assisi, Paestum holds the Temples of Ceres and Minerva, and on the hill of Athens the Parthenon shines in immortal marble. Their statues are still in adoration, and how should a poor outmoded deity understand that we worship him as art, not as divinity? It does but add to his confusion that now and anon prayers ascend to him as of yore, for can a poor Olympian, whose toe has been faith-bitten, comprehend that he has been catalogued as pope or saint? Perchance some drowsing Druid god, as he perceives our scrupulous ritual of holly and fir-branch, imagines his worship unchanged, and glads to see the vestal led under the mistletoe by his officiating priest. Perchance in the blaze of snapdragon some purblind deity beholds his old fire-offerings, and the savour of turkey mounts as incense to his Norse nostrils. Shall we rudely arouse him from his dream of dominion, shall we tell him that he and his gross ideas were banished two millenniums ago, and that the world is now under the sway of gentleness and love? Nay, let him dream his happy dream; let sleeping gods lie. For who knows how vigorously his old lustfulness and blood-thirst might revive; who knows what new victims he might claim at his pyres, were he clearly to behold his power still unusurped, his empire still the kingdom of the world?
THE CARPENTER’S WIFE: A CAPRICCIO
“Habent sua fata—feminæ.”
Although the Pilgrims’ Way is a shady arcade, yet the ascent from Vicenza was steep enough to be something of a penance that sultry spring evening, and I was weary of the unending pillars and the modern yet already fading New Testament frescoes between them. But I was interested to see which parish or family had paid for each successive section, and what new name for the Madonna would be left to inscribe upon it. For even the Litany of Loreto seemed exhausted, and still the epithets poured out—“_Lumen Confessorum_,” “_Consolatrix Viduarum_,” “_Radix Jesse_,” “_Stella Matutina_,” “_Fons Lachrymarum_,” “_Clypeus Oppressorum_”—a very torrent of love and longing.
At last as I neared the summit of the Way, a fresco flashed upon me the meaning of it all—an “Apparitio B.M.V. in Monte Berico, 1428,” representing the Virgin in all her radiant beauty appearing to an old peasant-woman. So this it was that had raised this long religious road to the Church of Our Lady of the Mountain! I remembered the inscription in S. Rocco, telling how 30,000 men had pilgrimed here in 1875—“spectaculum mirum visu.”
But where was the church that had been built over the spot of the Madonna’s appearance? I looked up and sighed wearily. I was only half-way up, I saw, for the road turned sharply to the right, and a new set of names began, and a new set of frescoes—still cruder, for I caught sight of nails driven into the Cross through the writhing frame of the Christ. But even my curiosity in the cornucopia of epithets was worn out. The corner had a picturesque outlook, and on the hill-side a bench stood waiting. Vicenza stretched below me, I could see the Palladian palaces admired of Goethe, the Greek theatre, the Colonnades, the Palace of Reason with its long turtle-back roof; and, beyond the spires and campaniles, the gleam of the Venetian Alps. A church-bell from below sounded for “Ave Maria.” I sat down upon the bench and abandoned myself to reverie. Why should not the Madonna appear to _me_? I thought. Why this preference for the illiterate? And then I remembered that this very Pilgrims’ Way had served as a battle-ground for the Austrians and the poor Italians of ’48. How these Christians love one another! I mused. And so my mind’s eye flitted from point to point, seeing again things seen or read—in that inconsequent phantasmagoria of reverie—to the pleasant droning of the vesper bell. Presently, telling myself it was getting late, I arose and continued my ascent to the Church of Our Lady of the Mountain.
* * * * *
But I looked in vain, as I came up the hill, for the inscriptions and the frescoes. The sun was lower in the west, but the sunshine had grown even sultrier, the sky even bluer, the road even steeper and rougher, and it was leading me on to a gay-flowering plain lying in a ring of green hills amid the singing of larks and the cooing of turtle-doves. And on this plain I saw arising, not the church of my quest, but a far-scattered village, whose small square, primitive houses would have seemed ugly had their roofs not been picturesque with storks and pigeons and their walls embowered in their own vines and fig-trees and absorbed into the pervasive suggestion of threshing-floors and wine-presses and rural felicity. By a central fountain I could perceive a group of barefoot maidens, each waiting her turn with her water-jar. They seemed gaily but lightly clad, in blue and red robes, with bracelets gleaming at their wrists and strings of coins shining from their faces.
Anxious to learn my whereabouts, yet shy of intruding upon this girlish group, I steered my footsteps towards one who, her urn on her shoulder, seemed making her way by a side-track towards a somewhat lonely house on the outskirts, overbrooded by the brow of a hill. She was brown-skinned, I saw as I came near, very young, but of no great beauty save for her girlish grace and the large lambent eyes under the arched black eyebrows.
“Di grazia?” I began inquiringly.
“Aleikhem shalôm,” tripped off her tongue in heedless answer. Then, as if grown conscious I had said something strange, she paused and looked at me, and I instinctively became aware she was a Hebrew maiden. Yet I had still the feeling that I must get back to Vicenza.
“How far is thy servant from the city?” I asked in my best Hebrew.
“From Yerushalaim?” she asked in surprise. “But it is many parasangs. Impossible that thou shouldst arrive at Yerushalaim before the Passover, even borne upon eagles’ wings. Behold the sun—the Sabbath-Passover is nigh upon us.”
Ere she ended I had divined by her mispronunciation of the gutturals and by the Aramaic flavour of her phrases that she was a provincial and that I was come into the land of Canaan.
“What is this place?” I inquired, no less astonished than she.
“This is Nazara.”
“Nazara? Then am I in Galila?”
“Assuredly. Doubtless thou comest from the great wedding at Cana. But thou shouldst have returned by way of Mount Tabor and the town of Endor. Didst thou perchance see my mother at Cana?”
“Nay; how should I know thy mother?” I replied evasively.
She smiled. “Am I not made in her image? But overlong, meseems, have ye all feasted, for it is two days since we expect my mother and brothers.”
“Shall thy servant not carry thine urn?” I answered uneasily.
“Nay, I thank thee. It is not a bowshot to my door. And,” she added with a gentle smile, “my brothers do not carry my burdens; why should a stranger?”
“And how many brothers hast thou?” I asked.
“Some are dead—peace be upon them. But there are four yet left alive—nay,” she hesitated, “five. But our eldest hath left us.”
“Ah, he hath married a wife.”
She flushed. “Nay, but we speak not of him.”
“There must ever be one black sheep in a flock,” I murmured consolingly.
She brightened up. “So my brother Yakob always says.”
“And Yakob should speak with authority on the colour of sheep, and not as the scribes.” I laughed with forced levity.
Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “Doubtless Yeshua is possessed of a demon,” she said. “One of our sisters, Deborah, was likewise a Sabbath-breaker, but now that she is old, having nineteen years and three strong sons, she is grown more pious than even our uncle Yehoshuah the Pharisee.”
“Lives she here?”
“Ay, yonder, near my mother’s sister, the wife of Halphaï.”
She pointed towards a battlemented roof, but my eyes were more concerned with her own house, at which we were just arriving. It was a one-storey house, square and ugly like the others, redeemed by its little garden with its hedge of prickly pear, though even this garden was littered with new-made wheels and stools and an olive-wood table.
“Halphaï is gone up for the Passover,” she added. She stopped abruptly. The tinkle of mule-bells was borne to us from a steep track that came to join our slower pathway.
“Lo, my mother!” she cried joyfully; and placing her urn upon the ground, she hastened down the narrow track. I moved delicately, yet not without curiosity, to the flank of the hedge, and presently a little caravan appeared, ambling gently, with the girl walking and chattering happily by the side of her mother, who rode upon an ass. I noticed that the woman, who was small and spare, listened but little to her daughter’s eager talk, and seemed deaf to the home-coming laughter of her four curly-headed sons, who rode their mules sideways, with their legs dangling down like the fringes of their garments. Her shoulders were sunk in bitter brooding, and when a sudden stumbling of her ass made her raise her head mechanically to pull him up, I saw the shimmer of tears in her large olive-tinted eyes. Certainly I should not have called her made in the image of her daughter, I thought at that moment, for the face was sorely lined, and under the cheap black head-shawl I saw the greying hair that was still raven on her arched eyebrows. But doubtless the burden of much child-bearing had worn her out, after the sad fashion of Eastern women.
These reflections were, however, dissipated as soon as born, for a little cry of dismay from the girl brought to my perception that it was the forgotten water-jar that had caused the ass’s stumble, and that the urn now lay overturned, if not shattered, amid a fast-vanishing pool.
The little mishap made her brothers smile. “Courage!” cried the eldest. “Yeshua will fill it with wine instead.” At this all the four rustics broke into a roar of merriment. The youngest, a mere beardless youth, added in his vulgar Aramaic, “What one ass hath destroyed another will make good.”
The little woman turned on him passionately. “Hold thy peace, Yehudah. Who knows but that he did change the water into wine?”
“Let him come and do it here,” retorted the eldest. “Thou hast not forgotten what befell when he essayed his marvels in Nazara. No mighty works could he do here, albeit Shimeon and Yosé, inclining their ears to Zebedee’s foolish wife, were ready to sit on his right and left hand in the Kingdom.”
The two young men who had not yet spoken looked somewhat foolish.
“He laid his hand upon sick folk and healed them,” one said in apology.
“How many?” queried young Yehudah scornfully. “And how many are alive to-day? Nay, Shimeon, if he be Messhiach let him heal us of these Roman tyrants—not go about with their tax-farmers!”
“Peace, Yehudah!” The little mother looked round nervously, and a fresh terror came into those tragic eyes. There was something to me deeply moving in the sight of that shrinking little peasant-woman surrounded by these strong, tall rustics whom she had borne and suckled.
“Let Yeshua hold his peace!” answered the lad angrily, “and not prate about rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. But, God be thanked, a greater Yeshua hath arisen—Ben Abbas—a true patriot, who one day——”
“Aha! Behold my flock at last!” Startled by this sudden new angry voice, I glanced over the hedge, and saw standing on the doorstep cut in the rock, with a hammer in his horny hand, a big red-bearded peasant with bushy eyebrows. “These two days, Miriam, have I awaited thee.”
The little woman slid meekly off her ass. “But, Yussef,” she said mildly, “thou saidst thou wouldst go up for the Paschal sacrifice!”
“And how could I go up to the Holy City with all this work to finish, and not one of my four sons to carry my work to Sepphoris before the Sabbath!” He glared at them as they began to lead their beasts behind the garden. “Halphaï was sorely vexed that I did not company him and join in his lamb-group. And the house is not even ready for Passover at home; I shall be liable to the penalty of stripes.”
“I baked the mazzoth ere I departed,” his wife protested, “and Sarah hath purged the house of leaven.” She patted her daughter’s head.
“Sarah?” he growled, reminded of a fresh grievance. “Sarah should have had a husband of her own. But with these idle sons of mine, feasting and merrymaking while I saw and plane, I cannot even save fifty zuzim for her dowry.”
Sarah blushed and hastened to pick up her urn and carry it back to the fountain.
“Nay, but we have tarried at Kephar Nahum,” said Yakob defensively, as he disappeared.
The carpenter turned on his wife, his eyes blazing almost like his beard. His hammer struck the table in the garden, denting it. “’Twas to see thy loveling thou leftest home!”
The little mother went red and white by turns. “As my soul liveth, Yussef, I knew not he would be at the wedding.”
“He was at the wedding?” he asked, softened by his surprise.
“Ay, he and his disciples.”
“Disciples!” The carpenter sniffed wrathfully. “A pack of fishers and women, and that yellow-veiled Miriam from Magdala.”
“The Magdala woman was not there!” she murmured, with lowered eyes.
“She knew thy kinsman would not suffer her pollution. Ah, Miriam, what a son thou hast brought into the world!”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Thou must not pay such heed to the Sanhedrim messengers. In their circuit to announce the time of the New Moon they gather up all the evil rumours of Galila. This Magdala woman is repentant; her seven devils are cast out.”
“Miriam defends Miriam,” he said sarcastically. “But thou canst not say I trained him not up in the way he should go. Learning could we not afford to give him, but did not thine own brother, Jehoshuah ben Perachyah, teach him Torah, and did I not teach him his trade? His ploughs and yokes were the best in all Galila.”
“And now his followers say his homilies are the best,” urged the poor mother.
“Homilies?” he roared. “Blasphemies! But were his Midraschim Holy Writ itself, I agree with Ben Sameos (his memory for a blessing!) greater is the merit of industry than of idle piety.”
“But why should he work?” cried Yakob, who with Yehudah now reappeared from the stable. “Would that the wife of Herod’s steward followed _me_!”
“Or even that Susannah ministered to us with her substance!” added Yehudah. “Then I too would teach, take no thought for the morrow!” And he laughed derisively.
“He never took thought for anything save himself,” said Yussef, shaking his head. “Dost thou not remember, Miriam, those three dreadful days when he was lost, as we were returning from his Bar-Mitzvah in Yerushalaim! God of Abraham, shall I ever forget thy heart-sickness! And what was it he answered when we at length found him in the Temple with the doctors? He was about his father’s business! He was assuredly not about _my_ business.”
“The Sabbath and Passover are drawing nigh,” she murmured, and slipped past her sons into the house.
“And what did he answer thee at Kephar Nahum?” her husband called after her. “‘Who is my mother?’ The godless scoffer! The Jeroboam ben Nebat! I thank the Lord _I_ did not try to bring him back home. He might have asked, ‘Who is my father?’”
There was no reply, but I heard the nervous bustling of a broom. The carpenter turned to Yakob.
“And what said he at Cana?”
“He demanded wine, he and his disciples!”
“Methought he was an Ebionite or an Essene!”
“Nay, as thou saidst, Yeshua was ever a law unto himself. But there was no wine.”
“No wine?” cried Yussef. “So great a wedding company and no wine? Methought the Chosan was rich enough to plant wine-booths all the way from Cana to Nazara, like the Parnass of Sepphoris, and had as many gold and silver vessels as the priests in the Temple.”
“True, my father, but Yeshua had brought with him that vile tax-farmer Levi, who grinds the faces both of rich and poor, and, seeing the spying publican, the bridegroom straightway bade the servants hide the precious flagons and goblets, lest more taxes be squeezed out for the Romans.”
Yussef grinned knowingly. “And so poor Yeshua must go athirst.”
“Nay, but hear. When he clamoured for wine the servants wist not what to do, and my mother said gently to him, ‘They have no wine.’ But Yeshua turned upon her like a lion of Mount Yehudah upon a lamb, and he roared, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come to be a Nazarite.’”
The carpenter chuckled. “Now she will know to stay at home. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’” he repeated with unction.
“Howbeit, my mother feared that his demon again possessed him, and she besought the servants to do whatsoever he said unto them. But they still held back. Then Yeshua, understanding what it was they feared, said, ‘Bring the water-pots.’ So they went out and brought the earthen pots wherewith we had washed our hands for the meal—albeit Yeshua would not wash his—and lo! they were full of wine.”
The carpenter repeated his knowing grin. “And Levi the publican—what said he?”
“He was the first to cry ‘A miracle!’” laughed Yakob, “and Shimeon-bar-Yonah held up his hands and cried, ‘Master of the Universe! Now is Thy glory manifest!’”
Yussef joined in his son’s laugh. “Is not Shimeon the lake fisherman?”
“Yea, my father; him whom Yeshua calls the Rock.”
“The Rock, in sooth!” broke in fiery young Yehudah. “Say rather, the Shifting Sand. It was from Shimeon I learned to be a Zealot, and now this recreant Maccabæan is bosom friend of Roman tax-gatherers and babbles of the keys of Heaven.”
“Babble not thyself, little one,” the father rebuked him. He turned to Yakob. “And what said Yeshua after the wine?”
“When he beheld his disciples had drunk new faith in him, he too was flown, and prophesied darkly that he would appear on the right hand of power, with clouds of glory and twelve legions of angels, whereat my mother feared that his madness was come upon him as of yore, and she made us follow in his train as far as his lodging in Kephar Nahum. And we spake privily to Yudas that he should watch over him till his unclean spirit was exorcised.”
“Yudas!” cried Yussef. “What doth an honest Israelite like Yudas in such company? But did I not foretell what would come of all these baptizings of Rabbi Jochanan, all these new foolish sects with their white garments and paddles and ablutions? Canaan is full of wandering madmen. The Torah I had from my father, Eli—peace be upon him!—is holy enough for me, and may God forgive me that I have not gone up to kill the Paschal lamb.”
Yakob lowered his voice. “Thou wouldst have met the madman.”
“What! Yeshua is gone to Yerushalaim?”
“Sh! My mother knoweth naught. We spake him secretly as though converted, saying, ‘Lo! we have seen this day how thou workest miracles. But if thou do these things, show thyself to the world. Depart hence and go into Yudæa, that men may see the works that thou doest.’ For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. So he is gone up to Yerushalaim!”
The malicious glee on Yakob’s face was reflected in his father’s. “Now shall the mocker be mocked! Even thy learned uncle, Ben Perachyah, they scoff at for his accent, nor will they let him read the prayers. How much less, then, will they listen to Yeshua!”
“And the Pharisees hate him,” said Yakob, “because he hath called them vipers, and the Shammaites for profaning the Sabbath; even the Essenes for not washing his hands before meals.”
“And all the Zealots hold him a traitor!” cried Yehudah with flashing eyes.
“Nor will the Sadducees or the Bœthusians listen to a carpenter’s son,” added Yakob laughingly.
“Shame on thee, Yakob, for fouling thine own well!” And Sarah, returning with her pitcher on her shoulder, went angrily within.
Yakob grew red. “And dost thou think the nobles of Yerushalaim who eat off gold and silver will follow him like fishers?” he called after her. “Say they not already, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazara?’”
“Yeshua is gone to Yerushalaim?” The little mother had dashed to the door, her eyes wide with terror. The urn she had just taken from her daughter fell from her trembling hand and shattered itself on the rocky doorstep, splashing husband and son.
“Woman!” cried the carpenter angrily, “have more care of my substance!”
“Yeshua is gone to Yerushalaim!” she repeated frenziedly.
“Ay, like a good son of Israel. He hath gone up for the Paschal sacrifice. Mayhap,” he added with his chuckle, “he will do wonders with the blood of the lamb. Come, Miriam, let us change our garments and anoint ourselves for the festival.”
He pushed the woman gently within the room, but she stood there as one turned into a pillar of salt, and with an Eastern shrug he went in.
Presently Sarah came and wiped the steps with a clout and gathered up the shards, and then, with a new pitcher on her shoulder, she bent her steps towards the fountain.
I skirted round to meet her on her return, not a little to her amazement; but this time she surrendered her burden to my entreaty, though the ungainly manner in which I poised the pitcher lightened her clouded brow with inner laughter.
“This wandering brother of thine,” I ventured to ask at length, “dost thou think harm will befall him in Yerushalaim?”
Her brow puckered thoughtfully. “Perchance these strangers will believe on him, not knowing as we do that he hath a demon. Yeshua was wroth with us when he came, crying out that a man’s foes are those of his own household, and a prophet is nowhere without honour save in his own country. But how should Yeshua be able to work miracles more than Yakob or Yehudah? When he stood up in our synagogue on the Shabbos to read and expound the prophet Yeshaiah, his lips were touched with the same burning coal—almost he persuaded me to be a heretic—but inasmuch as he could do no miracles, all they in the synagogue were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city.” She pointed to the brow of the hill hanging over us. “Up there they led him, that they might cast him down headlong. But out of compassion for my mother, who had followed with the crowd, they let him go, and he returned to Kephar Nahum and continued to make yokes and wheels for his livelihood.”
“And he still works there?”
“Nay, he neglected his craft to preach in the great synagogue built by the centurion—indeed, it is a hot place for work down there by the lake, neither is it so healthy as here in Nazara. Also he had free lodging with the family of Shimeon-bar-Yonah whom they call Petros, while Shalome, the wife of Zebedee, and other women tended him and mended his garments. But his fever took him and he began to wander about all Galila, teaching in the synagogues and preaching his strange gospel?”
“What gospel?”
“How should a girl know? Some heresy anent the Kingdom. And there went out a fame of him through all the region round about, and some said he healed all manner of sickness, so that there followed him great multitudes of people. But many came to us and said, ‘Alas! he is beside himself.’ And the Messengers of the New Moon told us many strange tales, so that my mother was nigh distraught, and when it was bruited that he had said Kephar Nahum shall be thrust down to hell, she journeyed thither, she and my brothers, to bring him home and watch over his affliction. But lo! they could not lay hold of him, for he was surrounded by such a press of people that they could not even come nigh unto him. So she sent a message that his mother and brothers desired to have speech of him. And he answered, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ and he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples and said, ‘Behold my mother and my brothers.’ So she returned home sorely stricken, and put on mourning garments, and even the birth of her grandchildren gave her no joy. But when came the marriage of her rich kinsman in Cana my father would have her go, being weary of her weeping and thinking to cheer her heart; but lo! her last state is worse than her first, inasmuch as——” She broke off abruptly as we reached the hedge of prickly pear. “But why have I told all this to a stranger?”
“Because I have none else with whom to eat the Passover,” I answered boldly.
She turned and looked at me. Then, taking her pitcher from me with a word of thanks, “I will tell my father,” she answered gravely.
I waited in the little garden, watching a patriarchal tortoise. Presently the carpenter reappeared on the doorstep, a new man in festal garment and mien, his head anointed with oil.
“Baruch Habaa!” he cried cordially. “Since I cannot go up to Yerushalaim, Yerushalaim comes up to me.”
I followed him into the house, duly kissing the mezuzah as I went through the door. The room was small and dark, with bare walls built of little liver-coloured blocks of cemented stone, and the matted floor seemed to hold less furniture than that which littered the garden. The carpenter’s bench had been covered with cushions, and I could see that the divan was used for a bed. Very humble was the house-gear, these earthenware dishes and metal drinking-cups and brass candlesticks on the Passover table, and I saw no ornaments save a few terra-cotta vases, a Hebrew scroll or two, and a rudely painted coffer. The housewife, busy at the hearth with the roasted egg and bone of the ritual, greeted me with wistful eyes and lips that vainly tried to murmur or smile a welcome, and I watched her deft mechanic movements as I sat lightly gossiping with the males over the exegesis of the seventh chapter of Yeshaiah. I told them that the Septuagint translator had darkened the fourteenth verse by loosely rendering עלמה as παρθένος, or “virgin,” instead of “maiden,” but this did not interest them, as they knew no Greek. The room took a more cheerful air when the mother lit the Sabbath candles with a blessing almost as inaudible as her welcome to me, and soon my host began the Haggadah service by holding his hands over the wine-goblet. But Yehudah asked the ritual question, “Why does this night differ from all other nights?” with a touch of sarcasm, and interrupted himself to cry passionately: “How can we celebrate our deliverance from Egypt when the Roman Eagle hangs at the very door of our Temple?” At this the little mother turned yet paler, and every eye glanced uneasily towards the stranger.
“Nay, I am no friend of the Romans,” I said reassuringly.
Yehudah continued the formula sullenly. It was as I had always heard it, save for the question, “Why is the meat all roasted and none sodden or boiled?” But the father had scarcely begun his ritual reply when we heard a loud knocking on the door, the latch was lifted, and in another instant we saw a burly man panting on the threshold, and behind him, more vaguely in the dusk, an agitated woman under a head-shawl.
“O Reb Yussef!” breathed the newcomer.
“Halphaï!” cried the carpenter in amaze. “Art not in Yerushalaim?”
The little mother had sprung to her feet.
“They have killed my Yeshua!” she shrieked.
“Sit down, woman!” said the carpenter sternly.
But she gestured to the figure in the rear: “Speak, my sister, speak.”
“Nay, _I_ will speak,” grumbled her sister’s husband. “Why else did I take horse from the Holy City without hearing the Levites sing or the trumpets blow for the blood-sprinkling? Thy Yeshua came up through the Fountain Gate riding on an ass, and as one flown with new wine.”
“Yea, the wine of the water-pots!” laughed Yakob.
“And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, ‘Hosanna to the son of David!’” He paused for breath, leaving this picture suspended, and I saw a new light leap into the mother’s tragic eyes, a strange exaltation as of a secret hope incredulously confirmed.
“In Yerushalaim?” she breathed. “They cry Hosanna in Yerushalaim?”
“Yea,” said her sister. “And Halphaï told me, even the little children cried, ‘Hosanna to the son of David!’”
The carpenter was crumbling a mazzo with nervous fingers; an angry vein swelled on his forehead. “And Pilatus permitted this?” he cried.
“Patience, Reb Yussef!” said Halphaï. “There is more to come. For, growing yet more swollen in his presumption, Yeshua went to the Holy Temple, and, entering the Court of the Gentiles, where sit those who sell the sheep and the oxen and doves, instead of purchasing a sacrifice for his sins, he drove them all out with a scourge of small cords and poured out the changers’ money!”
Horror held the household dumb. I saw Halphaï look round complacently, as though compensated for his hot ride to Nazara. “And ye know what profit Hanan makes out of his bazaars,” he added significantly.
The mother was wringing her hands. “Hanan will never forgive him,” she cried. “They will kill him as they killed Jochanan the Baptizer.”