“What’s that?  Why are they silent?  Have they suddenly divined the truth?”

Momentarily the whole head of Judas, in all its parts, was filled with the rumbling, shouting and roaring of a thousand maddened thoughts!  Had they divined?  They understood that this was the very best of men—­it was so simple, so clear!  Lo!  He is coming out, and behind Him they are abjectly crawling.  Yes, He is coming here, to Judas, coming out a victor, a hero, arbiter of the truth, a god....

“Who is deceiving Judas?  Who is right?”

But no.  Once more noise and shouting.  They are scourging Him again.  They do not understand, they have not guessed, they are beating Him harder, more cruelly than ever.  The fires burn out, covered with ashes, and the smoke above them is as transparently blue as the air, and the sky as bright as the moon.  It is the day approaching.

“What is day?” asks Judas.

And lo! everything begins to glow, to scintillate, to grow young again, and the smoke above is no longer blue, but rose-coloured.  It is the sun rising.

“What is the sun?” asks Judas.

CHAPTER VIII

They pointed the finger at Judas, and some in contempt, others with hatred and fear, said: 

“Look, that is Judas the Traitor!”

This already began to be the opprobrious title, to which he had doomed himself throughout the ages.  Thousands of years may pass, nation may supplant nation, and still the air will resound with the words, uttered with contempt and fear by good and bad alike: 

“Judas the Traitor!”

But he listened imperturbably to what was said of him, dominated by a feeling of burning, all-subduing curiosity.  Ever since the morning when they led forth Jesus from the guardroom, after scourging Him, Judas had followed Him, strangely enough feeling neither grief nor pain nor joy—­only an unconquerable desire to see and hear everything.  Though he had had no sleep the whole night, his body felt light; when he was crushed and prevented from advancing, he elbowed his way through the crowd and adroitly wormed himself into the front place; and not for a moment did his vivid quick eye remain at rest.  At the examination of Jesus before Caiaphas, in order not to lose a word, he hollowed his hand round his ear, and nodded his head in affirmation, murmuring: 

“Just so!  Thou hearest, Jesus?”

But he was a prisoner, like a fly tied to a thread, which, buzzing, flies hither and thither, but cannot for one moment free itself from the tractable but unyielding thread.

Certain stony thoughts lay at the back of his head, and to these he was firmly bound; he knew not, as it were, what these thoughts were; he did not wish to stir them up, but he felt them continually.  At times they would come to him all of a sudden, oppress him more and more, and begin to crush him with their unimaginable weight, as though the vault of a rocky cavern were slowly and terribly descending upon his head.