And it was then that Jesus appeared at the end of the domed gallery.  Hazael signed to one of the brethren to bring a chair to him, and when Jesus was seated Hazael told him who the strangers were in these words:  great trouble has fallen upon our order, he said, the wives the brethren have taken unto themselves against my counsel have not obeyed their husbands.  Wilt tell our Brother Jesus the trouble that has befallen those that stayed by the lake, Shallum?  I will, Shallum replied, for it will please him to hear my story and it will be a satisfaction to me to tell the quarrels that set my wife and me apart till at last I was forced to send her back to her own people.  My story will be profitable to you, though you are without wives, for to err is human.  The brethren were at once all ear for the new story, but Shallum was so prolix in his telling of his misfortunes that the brethren begged him to tell them again of the ranging of the gods and goddesses on either side of the president’s marriage-bed.  He paid no heed to them, however, but proceeded with his own story, and so slow was his procedure that Hazael had to interrupt him again.  Shallum, he said, it is clear to me that our shepherd has come with some important tidings to me, and it will be kind of thee to forgo the rest of thy story for the present at least, till I have conferred with our shepherd.  I should have been loath, Jesus interposed, to interrupt a discourse which seems to be pleasing to you all and which would be to me too if I had knowledge of the matters which concern you, but the differences of men with their wives and wives with their husbands are unknown to me, my life having been spent on the hills with rams and ewes.  As he said these words a smile came into his eyes.  The first smile I have seen on his face for many years, Hazael said to himself, and Jesus continued:  I have left my flock in charge of my serving boy, for I have come to tell the president that he must not be disappointed if many sheep are lost on the hills this year; robbers having hidden themselves again in the caves and fortified themselves among cliffs so difficult that to capture them soldiers must be let down in chests and baskets—­a perilous undertaking this is, for the robbers are armed and determined upon revolt against Herod, who they say is not a Jew, and holds his power in Judea from the Romans.  They are robbers inasmuch as they steal my sheep, but they are men who value their country higher than their lives.  This I know, for I have conferred with them:  and Jesus told the Essenes a story of an old man who lived in a cave with his family of seven, all of whom besought him to allow them to surrender to the Romans.  Cowards, he said, under his breath, and made pact with them that they should come out of the cave one by one, which they did, and as they came he slew them and threw their bodies into the precipice, sons and daughters, and then he slew his wife, and after reproaching Herod with the meanness of his family, although he was then a king, he threw himself from the cliff’s edge.