The Silver Cross or The Carpenter of Nazareth Part 20

'Here's the cross at last! here's the cross!'

'A cross quite new and worthy of a king!'

'And as a king, the Nazarene will not say he is treated as a beggar!'

When the Romans heard it announced that the cross was brought, they seemed very vexed that their victim was about to escape them. Jesus, however, at the words 'Here's the cross! here's the cross!' rose up with a sort of relief, hoping, no doubt, soon to bid adieu to this world. The soldiers uncovered his eyes, drew off the red cloak, only leaving the crown of thorns upon his head, so that he remained half naked; he was thus conducted to the door of the guard-room, where he was met by the men who were carrying the cross. Doctor Baruch, Jonas the banker, and Caiphus, in their still unsatisfied hatred, exchanged triumphant looks--pointing to the young man of Nazareth, pale, bleeding, and whose strength seemed exhausted.--These merciless pharisees could not resist the cruel pleasure of once more outraging the victim. The banker Jonas said to him:

'You see, audacious insolent! the consequences of insulting the rich; you do not now rail at them? You no longer compare them to camels incapable of pa.s.sing through the eye of a needle! It is a great pity that your inclination for jesting is now pa.s.sed.'

'Are you satisfied now,' added Doctor Baruch, 'with having treated the doctors of law as swindlers and hypocrites, seeking to obtain the best places at feasts? At any rate they will not dispute with you your place on the cross.'

'And the priests,' added Caiphus, 'they were also swindlers and leeches who devoured the widow's mite, under the pretence of long prayers, hard-hearted men, less merciful than heathen Samaritans; dolts with minds just narrow enough to observe the Sabbath piously, but so proud that they had the trumpets sounded to announce their charities! You thought yourself strong, you played the audacious, at the head of your band of beggars, vagabonds, and prost.i.tutes, which you picked up in taverns, where you pa.s.sed your days and nights! Where are your partizans now? Call them, then, let them come and deliver you!'

The hatred of the crowd was not so patient as that of the pharisees, who delighted in slowly torturing their victim; and furious cries were soon heard of:

'Death to the Nazarene, death!'

'Let us make haste!'

'Do they mean to pardon him by thus r.e.t.a.r.ding his execution?'

'He will not expire in a moment; they will have plenty of time to converse with him when he is nailed to the cross.'

'Yes, let us hasten; his hand of wretches, frightened for a moment, might attempt to carry him off!'

'And besides, where is the use of speaking to him? You can see plainly he will not reply.'

'To death! to death!'

'And he must himself carry his cross to his place of punishment.'

The proposition of this fresh barbarity was received with applause by all. They led Jesus out of the guard-room, and placed the cross on one of his bleeding shoulders. The pain was so dreadful, the weight of the cross so heavy, that the wretched son of Mary felt his knees tremble, and he nearly fell to the ground; but finding fresh strength in his courage and resignation, he seemed to bear up against suffering; and, bending beneath his burthen, he slowly commenced his march. The crowd and escort of soldiers cried, in following him:

'Room, room, for the triumph of the King of the Jews!'

The mournful cortege put itself in motion for the place of execution, situated beyond the Judicial Gate; quitted the rich quarter of the temple, and pursued its way through a part of the town much less rich and very populous; thus, as by degrees the escort penetrated the quarter of the poor, Jesus received at least some marks of interest on their part. Genevieve saw a great many women, standing at their doors lamenting the fate of the young man of Nazareth; they remembered that he was the friend of poor mothers and their children; many of those innocents therefore sent, with their tears, kisses to the good Jesus, whose simple and touching parables they knew by heart. But, alas! almost at every step, vanquished by pain, crushed under the weight he carried, Mary's son stumbled; at length his strength entirely failed him; he fell on his knees, then on his hands, and his forehead struck the ground.

Genevieve thought him dead or expiring; she could not restrain a cry of grief and alarm; but he was not dead. His martyrdom and agony was still to endure. The Roman soldiers who followed him, as well as the pharisees, cried out:

'Up, up, lazy one! you pretend to fall that you may not carry your cross to the end?'

'You, who reproached the high priests for binding on the backs of men burthens insupportable, but which the priests would not touch with a finger,' said Doctor Baruch, 'you are now doing precisely as they do in refusing to bear your cross!'

Jesus, still on his knees, and his face bent toward the ground, helped himself to rise with his two hands, which he did with great difficulty; then, still scarcely able to stand, he waited for them to place the cross on his shoulders; but scarcely was he again loaded with his burthen, when, despite his courage and goodwill, he tottered and fell a second time, crushed beneath the weight.

'Come,' said one of the emissaries, who, like the pharisees, had not quitted his victim, 'see you that man in the brown mantle, who pa.s.ses so quickly, turning away his head as if he desired not to be recognized?

I have often seen him at the sermons of the Nazarene; suppose we force him to carry the cross?'

'Yes,' said Baruch, 'call him.'

'Here! Simon!' cried the emissary; 'here! Simon the Cyrenean! you who took part in the predictions of the Nazarene, come now, and take part in the burthen he carries.'

Scarcely had the man Simon been recognized, than several amongst the crowd cried like him, 'Here, Simon! Simon!'

The latter, at the first appeal of the emissary, had quickened his march, as if he had heard nothing; but when a great number of voices cried out his name, he turned back, advanced to where Jesus was, and approached him with a troubled air.

'They are about to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, whose words you were so delighted to hear,' said the banker Jonas to him in a jesting manner; 'he is your friend, will you not help him to carry his cross?'

'I will carry it myself,' replied Simon, having the courage to look with an eye of pity on his young master, who, still kneeling, seemed ready to fall.

Simon, having taken up the cross, walked before Jesus, and the cortege pursued its route.

About a hundred paces further on, at the commencement of the street that leads to the Judicial Gate, in pa.s.sing before the shop of a vendor of woolen cloths, Genevieve saw a woman of a venerable figure leave the shop. This woman, at the sight of Jesus, pale, exhausted and bleeding, could not restrain her tears; then, for the first time, the slave, who until now, had forgotten that she might be sought after by order of her master the Seigneur Gremion, remembered the address which her mistress Aurelia had given her on the part of Jane, telling her that Veronica, her nurse, keeping a shop near the Judicial Gate, could give her an asylum. But Genevieve at this moment did not think of profiting by this chance of safety. An unconquerable force attached her to the steps of the young man of Nazareth, whom she resolved to follow to the end. She then saw Veronica in tears approach Jesus, whose face was bathed in a b.l.o.o.d.y sweat, and wipe with a linen towel the face of the poor martyr, who thanked Veronica by a smile of celestial sweetness. A little farther on, and whilst in the street which led to the Judicial Gate, Jesus pa.s.sed before several women who were weeping; he stopped a moment, and said to these women, with an accent of profound melancholy:

'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me! but weep for yourselves, weep for your children; for there will come a time when it shall be said, "Blessed are the barren! Blessed are they who have no children! Blessed are they who have not given suck!"'

Then Jesus, though broken with suffering, drawing himself up with an air of inspiration, his features impressed with a heart-rending grief, as if he had a consciousness of the frightful miseries he foresaw, exclaimed, in a prophetic tone which made the pharisees themselves tremble:

'Yes, the time approaches in which men, in their fear, will say to the mountains, "fall upon us!" and to the hills, "cover us!"'

And Jesus, bowing his head on his bosom, painfully pursued his march amidst the silence of stupor and alarm which had succeeded his prophetic words. The cortege continued to climb the steep street that leads to the Judicial Gate, under which you pa.s.s to ascend to Golgotha, a little hill situated outside the city, and at the summit of which are erected the crosses of the condemned.

Genevieve remarked that the crowd, at first so basely hostile to Jesus, began, as the hour of execution approached, to be moved, and to lament the fate of the victim. These unfortunate people comprehended, no doubt, but, alas, too late, that in allowing the friend of the poor and afflicted to be put to death, they not only deprived themselves of a defender, but that by their shameful ingrat.i.tude they froze up, for the future, the generous hearts that would have devoted themselves to their cause. When the Judicial Gate was pa.s.sed, they commenced ascending Mount Calvary. This ascent was so steep, that frequently Simon the Cyrenean, still carrying Jesus' cross, was obliged to stop, as well as the young man himself. The latter seemed to have preserved scarcely sufficient strength to enable him to reach the summit of this barren hill, covered with rolling stones, and where a few blades of sickly verdure alone grew. The sky was covered with thick clouds; the day being gloomy and funereal, threw a veil of sadness over all things. Genevieve, to her great surprise, observed, towards the summit of Calvary, two other crosses erected besides the one intended to be erected for Jesus. In her astonishment, she inquired of a person in the crowd, who replied to her:

'These crosses are intended for two thieves, who are to be crucified at the same time as the Nazarene.'

'And why do they execute these thieves at the same moment as the Nazarene?' inquired the slave.

'Because the pharisees, men of justice, wisdom, and piety, have resolved that the Nazarene shall be accompanied even in death, by the miserable wretches whose company he frequented during his life.'

Genevieve turned round to ascertain who had made her this reply; she recognized one of the two emissaries. 'Oh! the merciless wretches!'

thought she; 'they find means of outraging Jesus even in his death.'

When the Roman soldiers who had escorted the young man arrived, followed by the crowd, more and more silent and mournful, at the summit of Calvary, as also Doctor Baruch, Jonas the banker, and Caiphus the high priest, all three, anxious to a.s.sist at the agony and death of their victim, Genevieve perceived the two thieves destined to be crucified, bound and surrounded with guards; they were livid, and awaited their fate with a terror mingled with an impotent rage. At a sign from the Roman officer, chief of the escort, the executioners drew the two crosses from the holes in which they had been erected, and threw them on the ground; then seized the condemned, despite their cries, their blasphemies and desperate resistance, they stripped them of their garments and extended them on the crosses; then, whilst the soldiers held them there, the executioners, armed with long nails and heavy hammers, nailed to the crosses, by the feet and hands, these poor wretches who howled with pain. By this refinement of cruelty they made the young man of Nazareth a witness of the torture he was himself about to suffer; consequently, at sight of the sufferings of these two companions of punishment, Jesus could not restrain his tears; he then buried his face in his hands to shut out the painful vision.

The two thieves crucified, the executioners again erected their crosses, on which they writhed and groaned, thrust them some way into the ground, and strengthened them by means of stones and piles.

'Come, Nazarene,' said one of the executioners to Jesus, approaching him, holding in one hand his heavy hammer, and in the other several long nails. 'Come, are you ready? Must we use violence to you, as to your two companions?'

'What can they complain of?' replied the other executioner; 'we are so much at our ease on a cross, with our arms extended, for all the world like a man stretching himself after a long nap!'

Jesus made no reply; he stripped off his garments, placed himself on the instrument of death, extended his arms on the cross, and turned toward heaven his eyes drowned in tears.

Genevieve then saw the two executioners kneel on each side of the young man of Nazareth, and seize their long nails and heavy hammers. The slave closed her eyes, but she heard the dull sounds of the hammers, as they drove the nails into the living flesh, whilst the two crucified thieves continued their cries. The blows of the hammer ceased--Genevieve opened her eyes: the cross to which they had attached the Nazarene had just been erected between those of the two crucified thieves. Jesus, his head crowned with thorns, his long chestnut hair glued to his temples by a mixture of blood and sweat, his face livid and impressed with fearful agony, his lips blue; seemed about to expire; the whole weight of his body resting on his two hands nailed to the cross, as also his feet, from whence the blood trickled; his arms stiffened by violent convulsive movements, whilst his knees, half bent, occasionally knocked against each other. Genevieve then heard the almost dying voice of the two thieves who, addressing Jesus, said to him: 'Cursed be thou, Nazarene!

cursed be thou, who told us that the first should be last, and the last first? Behold us crucified, what can'st thou do for us?'

'Cursed be thou, who told us that they alone who were sick had need of the physician: behold us ill; where is the physician?'