And the horsemen galloped on.  Meanwhile the fugitives from Nazareth had reached bad roads, and were tired and wretched.  Was not Jacob’s favourite son also taken into Egypt just like this child?  What will become of this one?  They became aware of their pursuers galloping behind over the bare plain.  Not a tree, not a shrub which could afford them protection.  They took refuge in the cleft of a rock, but Joseph said:  “What is the use of hiding?  They must have seen us.”  But as soon as they were well inside the dark hole, down came a spider from the mossy wall, summoned all her brood and her most distant relations in great haste, and they speedily spun a web over the opening, a web that was stronger than the iron railings in Solomon’s temple, at the entrance to the Holy of Holies.  Hardly was the weaving finished when the knaves came riding up.  One said:  “They crept into the hole in the rock.”

“What!” shouted another, “no one could have crept in there since the time of David the shepherd.  Look at the thick cobwebs.”

“That’s true,” they laughed, and straightway rode off.

An old man who seemed to have risen from the grave now stood before the dusky woman who had denied her own son and betrayed the stranger wanderers.  Whence he came he did not know himself.  He loved the lonely desert, the home of great thoughts.  He did not fear the robbers of the desert, for he was stronger than they because he had nothing.  Now and again the desire came to him to behold a human face, so that he might read therein whether the souls of men looked upwards or sank downwards.  The old man went up to the woman who had denied her own son and betrayed the fugitives.  And he said:  “Daughter of Uriah! twice have you given your son life:  once through pleasure, once through a lie.  So his life will be a lie.  He will breathe without living, and yet he will not be able to die!”

“Mercy!” she cried.

“He will see Jerusalem fall!”

“Woe is me!”

“He will see Rome burn!”

“Mercy!” she groaned.

“He will see the old world perish.  He will see the barbarians of the north prevail.  He will wander restless, he will be ill-treated and despised everywhere, he will suffer the boundless despair of universal misery, and he will not be able to die.  He will envy men their death anguish and their right to die.  He will learn how they suck sweet poison from the loveliest blossoms, and how twelve-year-old boys kill themselves from sheer weariness.  He is the son of lies and is banished into the kingdom of lies.  He will lament over the torments of old age, and he will not be able to die.  He will call those children whom Herod slew blessed, and gnash his teeth at the memory of the woman who saved him through a lie.”

“Oh, stop!” shrieked the woman.  “When will he be redeemed?”

“Perhaps when the eternal Truth is come.”

CHAPTER V