For this apparently he was loved:  when on all other faces there still lay the shadow of night, his powerful head, and bare breast, and freely extended arms were already aglow with the light of dawn.

The words of Peter, evidently approved as they were by the Master, dispersed the oppressive atmosphere.  But some of the disciples, who had been to the seaside and had seen an octopus, were disturbed by the monstrous image so lightly applied to the new disciple.  They recalled the immense eyes, the dozens of greedy tentacles, the feigned repose—­and how all at once:  it embraced, clung, crushed and sucked, all without one wink of its monstrous eyes.  What did it mean?  But Jesus remained silent, He smiled with a frown of kindly raillery on Peter, who was still telling glowing tales about the octopus.  Then one by one the disciples shame-facedly approached Judas, and began a friendly conversation, with him, but—­beat a hasty and awkward retreat.

Only John, the son of Zebedee, maintained an obstinate silence; and Thomas had evidently not made up his mind to say anything, but was still weighing the matter.  He kept his gaze attentively fixed on Christ and Judas as they sat together.  And that strange proximity of divine beauty and monstrous ugliness, of a man with a benign look, and of an octopus with immense, motionless, dully greedy eyes, oppressed his mind like an insoluble enigma.

He tensely wrinkled his smooth, upright forehead, and screwed up his eyes, thinking that he would see better so, but only succeeded in imagining that Judas really had eight incessantly moving feet.  But that was not true.  Thomas understood that, and again gazed obstinately.

Judas gathered courage:  he straightened out his arms, which had been bent at the elbows, relaxed the muscles which held his jaws in tension, and began cautiously to protrude his bumpy head into the light.  It had been the whole time in view of all, but Judas imagined that it had been impenetrably hidden from sight by some invisible, but thick and cunning veil.  But lo! now, as though creeping out from a ditch, he felt his strange skull, and then his eyes, in the light:  he stopped and then deliberately exposed his whole face.  Nothing happened; Peter had gone away somewhere or other.  Jesus sat pensive, with His head leaning on His hand, and gently swayed His sunburnt foot.  The disciples were conversing together, and only Thomas gazed at him attentively and seriously, like a conscientious tailor taking measurement.  Judas smiled; Thomas did not reply to the smile; but evidently took it into account, as he did everything else, and continued to gaze.  But something unpleasant alarmed the left side of Judas’ countenance as he looked round.  John, handsome, pure, without a single fleck upon his snow-white conscience, was looking at him out of a dark corner, with cold but beautiful eyes.  And though he walked as others walk, yet Judas felt as if he were dragging himself along the ground like a whipped cur, as he went up to John and said:  “Why are you silent, John?  Your words are like golden apples in vessels of silver filigree; bestow one of them on Judas, who is so poor.”