He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.
"But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get my patrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him before mine eyes!"
Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.
"And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha, mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of apostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the rest of the narrative from surmise. Marsyas assented; it hurt him as much to think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.
"It was doubtless his intent."
"Implacable enough to be Cæsar! And thou art not a member of the Essenic order—only a neophyte. That is disconcerting. Hast thou any influence with the brethren?"
"None whatever."
Perplexity sat dark on the Herod's brow. Marsyas, with his eyes on the prince's face, observed it.
"Can I not help thee?" he asked anxiously.
"I thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast no power with the Essenes. Now, I do not know."