The sweet miracle

THE SWEET MIRACLE
First Edition, September 1904 Second Edition, December 1904
BY EÇA DE QUEIROZ
DONE INTO ENGLISH BY EDGAR PRESTAGE OF THE LISBON ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES TRANSLATOR OF “THE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN”
LONDON — DAVID NUTT AT THE SIGN OF THE PHŒNIX 1904
TO MY MOTHER
Et circuibat Jesus omnes civitates et castella, docens in synagogis eorum et praedicans evangelium regn et curans cranem languorera et omnem infirmitatem.
Evangelium secundum Mattbaeum, caput IX.
Other short stories of Eça de Queiroz will follow if the present one continues to meet with a favourable reception.
IN those days Jesus had not yet departed from Galilee and the fair luminous margins of the Lake of Tiberias; but the news of his miracles had already penetrated as far as Enganim, a rich city of strong battlements set among vineyards and olive-groves in the Country of Issachar.
One afternoon there passed down the fresh valley a man of burning, dazzled eyes, who announced that a new Prophet, a handsome Rabbi, was traversing, the plains and villages of Galilee, foretelling the coming of the Kingdom of God, and curing all human ills. And while he sat and rested beside the Fountain of the Orchards, he went on to tell how this Rabbi had healed the slave of a Roman Decurion of leprosy on the Magdala Road, merely by spreading over him the shadow of his hands; and how, another morning, he had crossed by boat to the Country of the Gerasenes where the balsam-harvest was commencing, and had raised to life the daughter of Jairus, a man of consideration and learning who expounded the Sacred Books in the Synagogue. And when the husbandmen and shepherds round about, and the dark women with water-pots on their shoulders, inquired of him in their wonderment if this was in truth the Messias of Judah, and whether the sword of fire shone before him, and if the shadows of Gog and Magog, like the shadows of twin towers, walked on either side of him—the man, without even a draught of that thrice-cold water of which Joshua had drunk, took up his staff, shook his hair, and made his way pensively beneath the aqueduct, and straightway disappeared from sight in the mass of flowering almond trees. But a hope, delightful as the dew in the month when the grasshopper sings, refreshed these simple souls, and now, through all the Plain that stretches its verdure to Ascalon, the plough seemed easier to bury in the soil, and the stone of the winepress lighter to move; the children, even while they plucked bunches of anemones, watched, as they went, for a light to rise past the turn of the wall, or under the sycamore, while the aged from their stone seats at the city gate ran their fingers through the threads of their beards, and no longer unfolded the old sayings with such wise certainty as of yore.