“Judas, don’t revile!” roared Peter, pushing.  “How could we slay all His enemies?  They are so many!”

“And thou, Peter!” exclaimed John in anger, “dost thou not perceive that he is possessed of Satan?  Leave us, Tempter!  Thou’rt full of lies.  The Teacher forbade us to kill.”

“But did He forbid you to die?  Why are you alive, when He is dead?  Why do your feet walk, why does your tongue talk trash, why do your eyes blink, when He is dead, motionless, speechless?  How do your cheeks dare to be red, John, when His are pale?  How can you dare to shout, Peter, when He is silent?  What could you do?  You ask Judas?  And Judas answers you, the magnificent, bold Judas Iscariot replies:  ‘Die!’ You ought to have fallen on the road, to have seized the soldiers by the sword, by the hands, and drowned them in a sea of your own blood—­yes, die, die!  Better had it been, that His Father should have cause to cry out with horror, when you all enter there!”

Judas ceased with raised head.  Suddenly he noticed the remains of a meal upon the table.  With strange surprise, curiously, as though for the first time in his life he looked on food, he examined it, and slowly asked: 

“What is this?  You have been eating?  Perhaps you have also been sleeping?”

Peter, who had begun to feel Judas to be some one, who could command obedience, drooping his head, tersely replied:  “I slept, I slept and ate!”

Thomas said, resolutely and firmly: 

“This is all untrue, Judas.  Just consider:  if we had all died, who would have told the story of Jesus?  Who would have conveyed His teaching to mankind if we had all died, Peter and John and I?”

“But what is the truth itself in the mouths of traitors?  Does it not become a lie?  Thomas, Thomas, dost thou not understand, that thou art now only a sentinel at the grave of dead Truth?  The sentinel falls asleep, and the thief cometh and carries away the truth; say, where is the truth?  Cursed be thou, Thomas!  Fruitless, and a beggar shalt thou be throughout the ages, and all you with him, accursed ones!”

“Accursed be thou thyself, Satan!” cried John, and James and Matthew and all the other disciples repeated his cry; only Peter held his peace.

“I am going to Him,” said Judas, stretching his powerful hand on high.  “Who will follow Iscariot to Jesus?”

“I—­I also go with thee,” cried Peter, rising.

But John and the others stopped him in horror, saying: 

“Madman!  Thou hast forgotten, that he betrayed the Master into the hands of His enemies.”

Peter began to lament bitterly, striking his breast with his fist: 

“Whither, then, shall I go?  O Lord! whither shall I go?”

. . . . . . . .

Judas had long ago, during his solitary walks, marked the place where he intended to make an end of himself after the death of Jesus.