His fate was decided by this shattering of his last hope.  When it was dark he slunk past a farm.  Ropes hung over the walls; he pulled one off and hurried to the mountain.  The sun was setting behind Jerusalem, over the heights, like a huge, red, lustreless pane of glass.  Once more for the last time his eye sought the light, the departing light.  And a cross stood out large and dark against the red circle; the tall cross at Golgotha right in the centre of the gloomy sun.  Gigantic and dark it towered against the crimson background—­horrible!  The despairing heart of Judas could not endure it.  With a savage curse he went up to a fig-tree.  James was behind him.  He had seen Judas climb the slope, had waved his cloak and cried to him:  “It is I, James.  Brother, I come from the Master.  Listen, brother, mercy for sinners.  Mercy for all who repent.  Listen.”  Almost breathless he reached the fig-tree.  Arms and legs hung down lifeless, the mouth drawn in, the tongue protruding from the lips.  The body swung to and fro in the evening breeze.  The wretched man had not waited for the Saviour’s pardon.

Towards the end of that same day the old man of the East, who came from the desert where great thoughts dwell, the weary old man who called down twice the curse of everlasting unrest on the grandson of Uriah, went to a stonecutter in Jerusalem.  He thought it time to order his tombstone.  And on it were to be cut the letters “I.N.R.I.”

“Did you also belong to the Nazarene?” asked the stonecutter.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because it is the inscription on His cross.”

“It is the inscription on my grave,” said the old man, “and it means:  ‘IN NIRVANA REST I.’”

CHAPTER XXXVI

When all was over, Joseph of Arimathea, a blunt, outspoken disciple of Jesus, went to Pilate, the Governor, to ask him that the Prophet’s body might be buried that same evening.

“Have His legs been broken?” Pilate inquired of him.

“Sir, that is not necessary.  He is dead.”

“I do not believe you.”

“It is quite true, sir.  The captain pierced his side.”

“I have been warned about you,” said Pilate roughly.  “I shall send a guard to watch the grave.”

“As your lordship pleases.”

“The man said that He would rise from the dead on the third day.  It is likely that His friends will help Him!”

Joseph drew himself up in front of the Governor and said:  “Sir, what ground have you for such a suspicion?  Have we Jews proved ourselves so absolutely lawless in our fatherland?  Surely not so much so that this best of all men, this Divine Man, should have been condemned to death without a shadow of reason, and His followers, too, treated with contempt as if they were cheats and body-snatchers.”

“You have to thank your priests for that,” said Pilate, with cold indifference.