"It is!" Marsyas cried passionately.
But the rabbi went on patiently.
"I did not go out after Stephen," he continued. "I was not seen at the crucifixion of his Prophet. I do not urge bloodshed or urge on the work of Saul of Tarsus. So, who is Israel, O son of a shut house and of a hermit brotherhood? Saul, who knoweth no moderation? Certain feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate could overthrow in argument? Or the witnesses whom they suborned in revenge? Say, be these Israel, or Gamaliel who discountenanced the persecution? Or the people among whom the minions of the High Priest Jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the Nazarene faith, lest the people stone the Shoterim? Forget not, brother, that our lofty are the friends of Rome; our lowly, tributaries of Rome; our chief priests, dependent upon Rome—and the greater Israel is the unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!"
"But is it not just, then, that Saul be overtaken, who hath cast obloquy on Israel, having shed innocent blood and made Judea to be fled by the righteous?"
"Defendest thou the innocent of Israel, Marsyas?"
"By the Lord, the innocent!"
"Wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of thine own, Marsyas?"
The young man frowned and made no answer.
"I shall not answer for thee," Eleazar went on, "but thou and the world accuse the innocent of Israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as an entirety. But the slander of Israel hath been accomplished, even before Saul, and ye may not run down a lie. So thou and I and our kind have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from which there can be no let nor easement! The multitude which crowns to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard. But they are witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which may not be denied. If thou join thyself with them, Marsyas, for thine own ends, in that much thou ungirdest Israel!"
"Brother, Saul of Tarsus consented unto the death of Stephen, and despoiled me of my one love, as an Essene; he proceedeth, now, against my beloved, as a man of the world! I can not wait on conscience and the welfare of Judea. She will not defend mine own; wherefore I must defend them, at whatever cost!"