that man?’ he went back again into the court, and seeing that the persons in the vestibule were watching him, came up to the fire and remained before it for some time.  Several persons who had observed his anxious troubled countenance began to speak in opprobrious terms of Jesus, and one of them said to him, ’Thou also art one of his disciples; thou also art a Galilean; thy very speech betrays thee.’  Peter got up, intending to leave the room, when a brother of Malchus came up to him and said, ’Did I not see thee in the garden with him?  Didst thou not cut off my brother’s ear?’

Peter became almost beside himself with terror; he began to curse and to swear ‘that he knew not the man,’ and ran out of the vestibule into the outer court; the cock then crowed again, and Jesus, who at that moment was led across the court, cast a look of mingled compassion and grief upon his Apostle.  This look of our Lord pierced Peter to the very heart,—­it recalled to his mind in the most forcible and terrible manner the words addressed to him by our Lord on the previous evening:  ’Before the cock crows twice, thou shalt thrice deny me.’  He had forgotten all his promises and protestations to our Lord, that he would die rather than deny him—­he had forgotten the warning given to him by our Lord;—­but when Jesus looked at him, he felt the enormity of his fault, and his heart was nigh bursting with grief.  He had denied his Lord, when that beloved Master was outraged, insulted, delivered up into the hands of unjust judges,—­when he was suffering all in patience and in silence.  His feelings of remorse were beyond expression; he returned to the exterior court, covered his face and wept bitterly; all fear of being recognised was over;—­he was ready to proclaim to the whole universe both his fault and his repentance.

What man will dare assert that he would have shown more courage than Peter if, with his quick and ardent temperament, he were exposed to such danger, trouble, and sorrow, at a moment, too, when completely unnerved between fear and grief, and exhausted by the sufferings of this sad night?  Our Lord left Peter to his own strength, and he was weak; like all who forget the words:  ’Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.’

CHAPTER XI.

Mary in the House of Caiphas.

The Blessed Virgin was ever united to her Divine Son by interior spiritual communications; she was, therefore, fully aware of all that happened to him—­she suffered with him, and joined in his continual prayer for his murderers.  But her maternal feelings prompted her to supplicate Almighty God most ardently not to suffer the crime to be completed, and to save her Son from such dreadful torments.  She eagerly desired to return to him; and when John, who had left the tribunal at the moment the frightful cry, ‘He is guilty of death,’ was raised, came to the house of Lazarus to see after her, and to relate the