Barabbas pressed his face against the stone, and said with comfortable conviction; “We’ve only the life we have; there’s no other.”

“If it was as you say,” returned Dismas, “we must make this one life great——­”

“If there’s no life to come,” said Barabbas, “we must live this one out.  That is nature, and to deny it folly.  No, I will enjoy my life.  Enjoyment is a duty.”

“That is what bad men think,” said Dismas.

“There are no bad men,” exclaimed Barabbas, “and no good men either.  Friend, look at the lamb, he harms no one; he would rather be torn to pieces by the lion than tear the lion to pieces himself.  Is he good, therefore?  No, only weak.  And the lion who kills and eats the lamb?  Is he bad, therefore?  No, only strong.  And so it is his right to destroy the weak.  Strength is the only virtue, and the only good deed is to exterminate the weak.”

When he made an end of speaking, the other turned his face towards him and said:  “What extraordinary words are those?  I never heard such talk before.  In whose heart were such ideas born?”

“They were not born in the heart,” said Barabbas.  “The heart is dumb.  Dismas, if I must dwell in desert caves and do nothing, I must search out and inquire.  I break stones in pieces and search.  I pull the corpses of animals and men to pieces and inquire.  And I find that things are not as the old writings tell us.  There’s only one Messiah:  the truth.  Man is an animal like any of the lower creatures—­that is the truth.  Ha, ha, ha!”

A shudder went through Dismas’s body.  How he disliked this man!  And yet, on account of his companion’s strong will, and through the habit of years, he could not free himself.  He had often fled away from him, but had always come back.  Now he stood up, lifted his arms to heaven, and exclaimed:  “Oh, Lord, in the holy heights, save me!”

“Invoke the stars,” said Barabbas, with a scornful laugh.  “You’ll be right then.  They know nothing of you and your God.  They’re made of common dust.  They themselves, and all the beings on them, live in the same base struggle as does our earth and everything on it.  An enormous dust-heap, swarming with vermin, that’s all.”

Dismas sat on his stone with folded hands, pale as a corpse.

“Barabbas, my comrade,” he said at last, “it is your bad angel that speaks.”

“Why don’t you praise him, Dismas?  Why don’t you shout for joy?  My message has redeemed you.  You think because you’ve attacked, slain, and plundered unsuspecting travellers that everlasting hell must be your portion.  My strong message does away with hell.  Do you see that?”

The other replied:  “I heard a prophet in the wilderness cry that a man whom God had damned could be saved by repentance.  Your damnation, Barabbas, never!  No Almighty God!  Everything a dry, swarming dust-heap, and no escape!  Frightful, frightful!”