“How should I know, when I have never seen your wife?”

“True, true, Mary!  But what think you, are thirty pieces of silver a large sum?  Is it not rather a small one?”

“I should say a small one.”

“Certainly, certainly.  How much did you get when you were a harlot, five pieces of silver or ten?  You were an expensive one, were you not?”

Mary Magdalene blushed, and dropped her head till her luxuriant, golden hair completely covered her face, so that nothing but her round white chin was visible.

“How bad you are, Judas; I want to forget about that, and you remind me of it!”

“No, Mary, you must not forget that.  Why should you?  Let others forget that you were a harlot, but you must remember.  It is the others who should forget as soon as possible, but you should not.  Why should you?”

“But it was a sin!”

“He fears who never committed a sin, but he who has committed it, what has he to fear?  Do the dead fear death; is it not rather the living?  No, the dead laugh at the living and their fears.”

Thus by the hour would they sit and talk in friendly guise, he—­ already old, dried-up and misshapen, with his bulbous head and monstrous double-sided face; she—­young, modest, tender, and charmed with life as with a story or a dream.

But time rolled by unconcernedly, while the thirty pieces of silver lay under the stone, and the terrible day of the Betrayal drew inevitably near.  Already Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the ass’s back, and the people, strewing their garments in the way, had greeted Him with enthusiastic cries of “Hosanna!  Hosanna!  He that cometh in the name of the Lord!”

So great was the exultation, so unrestrainedly did their loving cries rend the skies, that Jesus wept, but His disciples proudly said: 

“Is not this the Son of God with us?”

And they themselves cried out with enthusiasm:  “Hosanna!  Hosanna!  He that cometh in the name of the Lord!”

That evening it was long before they went to bed, recalling the enthusiastic and joyful reception.  Peter was like a madman, as though possessed by the demon of merriment and pride.  He shouted, drowning all voices with his leonine roar; he laughed, hurling his laughter at their heads, like great round stones; he kept kissing John and James, and even gave a kiss to Judas.  He noisily confessed that he had had great fears for Jesus, but that he feared nothing now, that he had seen the love of the people for Him.

Swiftly moving his vivid, watchful eye, Judas glanced in surprise from side to side.  He meditated, and then again listened, and looked.  Then he took Thomas aside, and pinning him, as it were, to the wall with his keen gaze, he asked in doubt and fear, but with a certain confused hopefulness: 

“Thomas!  But what if He is right?  What if He be founded upon a rock, and we upon sand?  What then?”