'I had confided a few savings to Jonas, a high priest,' said a poor old woman; 'he told me he had expended the money in offerings for my salvation. What could I do, a poor woman against so powerful a seigneur? resign myself and beg for bread, which I do not find every day.'
At this complaint, Jesus exclaimed with increased indignation, 'Oh! woe to you hypocrites: because, under pretence of your long prayers you rob the widow of her mite. Woe to you, serpents, race of vipers! how will you escape being condemned to the fire of hell? It is for this I will send to you prophets and sages to save you.'
'But, alas!' added the son of Mary with an accent of much sorrow, 'you will kill the former; you would crucify the latter; you would persecute them from town to town, that all the innocent blood that has been shed upon the earth may return upon you—from the blood of Abel the just to the blood of Zachariah, whom you killed between the Temple and the altar!'
'Oh! fear nothing, friend! if these swallowers of camels wish to shed your blood,' exclaimed Banaias, striking the hilt of his large rusty cutlass, 'they must first shed ours, and we await them.'
'Yes, yes,' replied the crowd, in one voice, 'fear nothing, Jesus of Nazareth, we will defend thee!'
'We will die for thee if necessary!'
'You shall be our chief!'
'Our king!'
But the son of Mary, as if he mistrusted these transports, shook his head with a sadness more and more profound; tears streamed down his cheek, and he exclaimed, in a disconsolate voice:
'Oh! Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou who killed the prophets! thou who stone the wise men that are sent to thee! how often have I striven to assemble thy children, as a hen gathers together her little ones beneath her wings, and thou would'st not; no, thou would'st not!'