More and louder than any laughed Simon Peter at the jokes of Judas Iscariot.  But once it happened that he suddenly frowned, and became silent and sad, and hastily dragging Judas aside by the sleeve, he bent down, and asked in a hoarse whisper—­

“But Jesus?  What do you think of Jesus?  Speak seriously, I entreat you.”

Judas cast on him a malign glance.

“And what do you think?”

Peter whispered with awe and gladness—­

“I think that He is the son of the living God.”

“Then why do you ask?  What can Judas tell you, whose father was a goat?”

“But do you love Him?  You do not seem to love any one, Judas.”

And with the same strange malignity, Iscariot blurted out abruptly and sharply:  “I do.”

Some two days after this conversation, Peter openly dubbed Judas “my friend the octopus”; but Judas awkwardly, and ever with the same malignity, endeavoured to creep away from him into some dark corner, and would sit there morosely glaring with his white, never-closing eye.

Thomas alone took him quite seriously.  He understood nothing of jokes, hypocrisy or lies, nor of the play upon words and thoughts, but investigated everything positively to the very bottom.  He would often interrupt Judas’ stories about wicked people and their conduct with short practical remarks: 

“You must prove that.  Did you hear it yourself?  Was there any one present besides yourself?  What was his name?”

At this Judas would get angry, and shrilly cry out, that he had seen and heard everything himself; but the obstinate Thomas would go on cross-examining quietly and persistently, until Judas confessed that he had lied, or until he invented some new and more probable lie, which provided the others for some time with food for thought.  But when Thomas discovered a discrepancy, he would immediately come and calmly expose the liar.

Usually Judas excited in him a strong curiosity, which brought about between them a sort of friendship, full of wrangling, jeering, and invective on the one side, and of quiet insistence on the other.  Sometimes Judas felt an unbearable aversion to his strange friend, and, transfixing him with a sharp glance, would say irritably, and almost with entreaty—­

“What more do you want?  I have told you all.”

“I want you to prove how it is possible that a he-goat should be your father,” Thomas would reply with calm insistency, and wait for an answer.

It chanced once, that after such a question, Judas suddenly stopped speaking and gazed at him with surprise from head to foot.  What he saw was a tall, upright figure, a grey face, honest eyes of transparent blue, two fat folds beginning at the nose and losing themselves in a stiff, evenly-trimmed beard.  He said with conviction: 

“What a stupid you are, Thomas!  What do you dream about—­a tree, a wall, or a donkey?”