CHAPTER XXIV.
At the golden gate of the Temple courtyard, a Roman legionary soldier (detailed as body-servant to the General Paulus) met him. The soldier was leading a small, wiry Tauric (or really Tartar) horse. Paulus, twisting a lock of the animal's mane in his left hand, and taking up with the little finger thereof the loop of the bridle, sprang into the ephippia. The soldier smiled, as the still handsome and youthful-looking legatus settled himself on the back of his steed.
"Why are you smiling, my man?" quoth Paulus good-humoredly.
"It was like the spring I saw you take years ago at Formiæ, when I was a boy, upon the back of the horse Sejanus, which no man, my general, ever rode save you," replied the soldier.
"Ah!" said Paulus, smiling sadly; "were you there? I fear I am not so agile now. We are all passing away."
"Just as agile still, my general," returned the legionary, in a cordial tone; "but about twice as strong."
"Away! begone!" cried Paulus, laughing; "I am growing old." And shaking the reins, he waved a salute to Longinus, turned his pony round, and rode away again into the valley westward, while the centurion entered the city by the golden gate, and repaired under the walls of the Temple to Fort Antonio, where he was detailed as officer of Pilate's guard that night.
Paulus, meanwhile, rode slowly on his way, between the Kedron Brook and the walls of Jerusalem, till he came to the Pool of Siloam. There, he turned south, galloped to a fort which was near, turned back again to his right, or northward, followed the valley of Hinnom at a walking pace, looking up at the white and dazzling buildings on Mount Zion.
As he slowly passed them, he speculated which could have been David's palace. He saw Herod's plainly enough. On his right he noticed the aqueduct from Solomon's Pool, and followed its course as far as the Tower of Hippicus northward. There he entered the city by the Gate of Gennath, and followed the valley of the Cheesemongers (or Tyropæon hollow) until he came to Ophal.
In the middle of a very narrow street in this low and crowded quarter, where the Romans afterward under Titus were repulsed, he met a file of people, some mounted, some on foot, led by a richly-dressed, haughty-looking, burly man, riding a mule.
So narrow was the street that either Paulus would have had to go back as far as the Tower of Marianne, or the richly-dressed and haughty-looking man about one-quarter of the distance, to the bridge between the street of the Cheesemongers and the court of the Gentiles. Paulus, always full of courtesy, amenity, and sweetness, was in the very act of turning his small Tauric horse, when the burly man in rich dress, who led the opposing file, called out, "Back! low people! Back, and let Caiaphas go by!"
"And who is Caiaphas?" demanded Paulus, instantly facing round again and barring the way.
"The high-priest of Jerusalem," was the answer, thundered forth in rude and minatory tones.
"I respect," said Paulus, "and even revere that holy appellation; but he who uses it at this moment, for some present purpose, has flung against me, who am a Roman general, the mandate of Back, low people. Where are the low people? I do not believe that I am a low person. Where, then, are the low people?"
"Come on," cried the imperious voice of Caiaphas.
He himself, being the file leader, began then to move forward, till he came immediately in front of the traveller who had so courteously spoken to him.
"If you want," said Paulus, "to pass me at once, I must get into the ditch, or throw you into it; which do you prefer?"
"I prefer," quoth Caiaphas, "that you should throw me into the ditch, if you either dare or can."
"Sir," says Paulus, "I am sorry for the sentiment you express, or at least imply. But I will stand up against your challenge of throwing you into the ditch, because I both could do it, and dare do it, as a Roman soldier, only that there is One among you who has come to settle all our disputes, and who has a divine right to do so. For his sake I would rather be thrown into that drain by you—soldier, officer, general, and Roman as I am—than throw you into it."
"Let me pass," cried Caiaphas, purple with rage.
Paulus, whose behavior at Lake Benacus against the Germans, and previously at Formiæ, and afterward in the terrible Calpurnian House on the Viminal Hill, the reader remembers, made no answer, but, riding back to the Tower of Marianne, allowed the high-priest and his followers there to pass him; which they did with every token of scorn and act of contumely that the brief and sudden circumstances allowed. Caiaphas thus passed on to his country-house at the southwest-by-south of Jerusalem, where he usually spent the night.
Paulus then put his pony into a gallop, and soon reached the bridge across the Tyropæon into the courtyard of the Temple, commonly called the courtyard of the Gentiles. Such was the nervous excitement caused by his recent act of purely voluntary, gratuitous, and deliberate self-humiliation, that he laughed aloud as he rode through the Temple yard, coasting the western "cloisters," and so reaching Fort Antonio.
There his servant, the Roman legionary, who had before met him at the golden gate, and whose name was Marcus, was awaiting him.