'I am come from Bethlehem on foot to pray our good Jesus to cure my poor little babe; he is unparalleled for the cure of diseases of children, and far from being paid for his advices, he often gives you something wherewith to purchase the balsams he prescribes.'
'By the body of Solomon! I, too, hope that our friend Jesus will come here to-night,' observed a tall man, with a ferocious face, and a long stiff beard, dressed in a red rag of a turban, and a short robe of camel's hair, almost in rags, confined at the waist by a cord supporting a large rusty cutlass without a sheath. This man also held in his hand a long stick with an iron knob at the point.
'If our worthy friend of Nazareth does not come to-night, I shall have lost my time for nothing, for I had engaged to escort a traveller who feared going alone from Jerusalem to Bethlehem lest he should meet with unpleasant encounters.'
'Just look at that bandit, with his hang-dog face and his grand cutlass! Does he not look like a very safe escort?' quietly said to his companion one of the two emissaries, seated not very far from Genevieve.
'What a daring villain!'
'He would have murdered and robbed the too confident traveller in the first bye way!' said the other emissary.
'As true as my name is Banaias!' continued the man with the cutlass, 'I should have lost without regret this little godsend of escorting a traveller if our friend of Nazareth had come, I like the man. I must say! he consoles you not a little for wearing rags, by showing that since they can no more enter into paradise than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, all the wicked rich will one day be roasted like capons in Beelzebub's kitchen. This neither fills our belly or our purse, it's true, but it is a consolation; so I shall pass whole days and nights listening to his overhauling the priests, the doctors of law and the other pharisees! And our friend does well, for we must hear these pharisees. If you are brought before their tribunal for some trifle, they can only say, 'Quick to gaol or to the lash! thief! villain! firebrand of hell! son of Satan!' and other paternal remonstrances. By the nose of Ezekiel! do they think thus to ruin men? The cursed fools don't know, then, that many a horse, restive to the whip, will obey the voice. But our friend of Nazareth knows it well, when he said to us the other day, 'If your brother has sinned against you, take him back; if he repents, pardon him.' That's talking; for, by the ear of Melchisedeck! I am not as tender and benign as the pascal lamb. No, no: I have had time to harden my heart, my head and my skin.—Twenty years ago, my father drove me from his house for a youthful folly. Since then I have lived at loggerheads with the devil. I am just as difficult to bridle as a wild ass. And yet, on the faith of Banaias! by a single word of his gentle voice, our friend of Nazareth could make me go to the end of the world.'
'If Jesus cannot come,' said another drinker, 'he will send one of his disciples to inform us, and to preach to us good news in the name of his master.'
'For want of a cake of fine wheaten flour kneaded with honey, we eat barley bread,' said an old mendicant bent with age.
'The words of the disciples are good: that of the master is better.'