Wearied, and grown quite dizzy, Annas wildly stamped about the floor in his soft slippers, gesticulating:  “Be off, be off!”

But Judas on a sudden bowed down, stretching forth his hands submissively: 

“But if you really....  But why be angry with poor Judas, who only desires his children’s good.  You also have children, young and handsome.”

“We shall find some one else.  Be gone!”

“But I—­I did not say that I was unwilling to make a reduction.  Did I ever say that I could not too yield?  And do I not believe you, that possibly another may come and sell Jesus to you for fifteen oboli—­nay, for two—­for one?”

And bowing lower and lower, wriggling and flattering, Judas submissively consented to the sum offered to him.  Annas shamefacedly, with dry, trembling hand, paid him the money, and silently looking round, as though scorched, lifted his head again and again towards the ceiling, and moving his lips rapidly, waited while Judas tested with his teeth all the silver pieces, one after another.

“There is now so much bad money about,” Judas quickly explained.

“This money was devoted to the Temple by the pious,” said Annas, glancing round quickly, and still more quickly turning the ruddy bald nape of his neck to Judas’ view.

“But can pious people distinguish between good and bad money!  Only rascals can do that.”

Judas did not take the money home, but went beyond the city and hid it under a stone.  Then he came back again quietly with heavy, dragging steps, as a wounded animal creeps slowly to its lair after a severe and deadly fight.  Only Judas had no lair; but there was a house, and in the house he perceived Jesus.  Weary and thin, exhausted with continual strife with the Pharisees, who surrounded Him every day in the Temple with a wall of white, shining, scholarly foreheads, He was sitting, leaning His cheek against the rough wall, apparently fast asleep.  Through the open window drifted the restless noises of the city.  On the other side of the wall Peter was hammering, as he put together a new table for the meal, humming the while a quiet Galilean song.  But He heard nothing; he slept on peacefully and soundly.  And this was He, whom they had bought for thirty pieces of silver.

Coming forward noiselessly, Judas, with the tender touch of a mother, who fears to wake her sick child—­with the wonderment of a wild beast as it creeps from its lair suddenly, charmed by the sight of a white flowerlet—­he gently touched His soft locks, and then quickly withdrew his hand.  Once more he touched Him, and then silently crept out.

“Lord!  Lord!” said he.

And going apart, he wept long, shrinking and wriggling and scratching his bosom with his nails and gnawing his shoulders.  Then suddenly he ceased weeping and gnawing and gnashing his teeth, and fell into a sombre reverie, inclining his tear-stained face to one side in the attitude of one listening.  And so he remained for a long time, doleful, determined, from every one apart, like fate itself.