He saw himself as he was then, a rough voluptuary, a thoughtless, sentient beast who up to that time had lived a life of emptiness and of mockery, eating and drinking and sleeping and waking again day after day, year after year. And he saw himself as he was on that day, he one of thousands and thousands of lookers-on gazing on the three hours' agony of a just Man upon the Cross.
He remembered every minute of those three hours, which the hill of imperial Rome now pictured back to him as in a dream. He had stood there a mere unit amongst the crowd, wrapped in a dark cloak, unrecognised and unknown, but with every nerve strained to catch the words that fell from those dying lips. He had heard the cry of bitterness: "Lord! Lord! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" and that of infinite love and of supreme pardon: "Oh God, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
And above and around the sky grew darker and the air more still, and round that dying figure alone there shone a radiance unseen by most; for had they seen it as Taurus Antinor saw it then, then surely would they have known, would they have understood.
And at the foot of that Cross women and men stood weeping, and thoughtless soldiers hurled insults on their dying Lord. The lips that had only uttered words of perfect charity thirsted for a drop of water, and a sponge filled with gall was pressed mockingly to them.
But the arms were still extended wider and wider, so it seemed, as if in their almighty love they would embrace all that surging humanity; all those that suffered, those that hoped as well as those that doubted, those who mocked Him and those who adored.
Taurus Antinor's very manhood had cried out to him then to fight the multitude single-handed, to shake the power of Rome and defy the will of the people, and to rush up to that one Cross, towering above the others, to pick out with firm fingers every cruel nail, to wrap the sacred body in soft, soothing cloths, and to kiss every wound until it closed in health.
Even now, after all these years, the rough soldier's cheeks were burning with the shame of impotence.
To look on that sacrifice and be unable to stop it. To look on such a death and to continue to live on, still blind, still ununderstanding, even though the Teacher Who had come to explain had sighed ere he died: "It is finished!" And yet Taurus Antinor, now looking back upon his own past self, knew that at the time, despite the horror, the pity and the sorrow, there was also in his heart a sense of happiness and even a vague feeling of triumph.
What he saw there—with eyes that comprehended not—that he knew was because it must be; because it had been preordained and done by One Whose will was mightier than death. Though with aching heart and seared eyes he had watched every minute of the supreme agony, yet something within him, even then, had told him that every minute of that agony was a sacrifice that would not be in vain. And whilst in weakness he groaned with the pathos of it all, yet did his heart thrill with strange exultation, and from that Cross—even when all was silent—there rang in his ear the last words of perfect fulfilment of a perfect sacrifice:
"It is finished!"