“Put out the torches!” cried the wife of a charcoal dealer.

“He is right; for by reason of the Jew, we are putting the whole town in danger!” cried the cobbler.

“The mad fools have already thrown in some brands!”

“If you fellows up there fling any more I will break your ankles for you,” shouted a flax-dealer.

“Don’t try any burning,” the tailor commanded, “force open the door and have out the Jew.”  These words raised a storm of applause and the mob pressed forward to the Jew’s abode.  No one listened to Verus any more, and he slipped down from his slave’s shoulders, placed himself in front of the door and called out: 

“In the name of Caesar and the law I command you to leave this house unharmed.”

The Roman’s warning was evidently quite in earnest, and the false Eros looked as if at this moment it would be ill-advised to try jesting with him.  But in the universal uproar only a few had heard his words, and the hot-blooded tailor was so rash as to lay his hand on the praetor’s girdle in order to drag him away from the door with the help of his comrades.  But he paid dearly for his temerity for the praetor’s fist fell so heavily on his forehead that he dropped as if struck by lightning.  One of the Britons knocked down the sausage-maker and a hideous hand to hand fight would have been the upshot if help had not come to the hardly-beset Romans from two quarters at once.  The veterans supported by a number of lictors were the first to appear, and soon after them came Benjamin, the Jew’s eldest son, who was passing down the great thoroughfare with his boon-companions and saw the danger that was threatening his father’s house.

The soldiers parted the throng as the wind chases the clouds, and the young Israelite pressed forward with his heavy thyrsus fought and pushed his way so valiantly and resolutely through the panic-stricken mob, that he reached the door of his father’s house but a few moments later than the soldiers.  The lictors battered at the door and as no one opened it, they forced it with the help of the soldiers in order to set a guard in the beleaguered house, and protect it against the raging mob.

Verus and the officer entered the Jew’s dwelling with the armed men, and behind them came Benjamin and his friends—­young Greeks with whom he was in the habit of consorting daily, in the bath or the gymnasium.  Apollodorus and his guests expressed their gratitude to Verus, and when the old Jewish house-keeper, who had seen and heard from a hiding-place under the roof all that had taken place outside her master’s house, came into the men’s hall and gave a full report of the uproar from beginning to end, the praetor was overwhelmed with thanks; and the old woman embroidered her narrative with the most glowing colors.  While this was going on Apollodorus’ pretty daughter, Ismene, came in, and after falling on her father’s neck and weeping with agitation the house keeper took her hand and led her to Verus, saying: