'Whom seek you?'
'We seek Jesus,' replied the officer, still keeping behind his soldiers:
'We seek Jesus of Nazareth.'
'I am he!' said the Nazarene, making a step towards the soldiers. But the latter drew back frightened.
Jesus resumed: 'Once more, whom is it you seek?'
'Jesus of Nazareth!' they all cried with one voice; 'we wish to take Jesus of Nazareth!' and they again drew back.
'I have already told you that I am he,' replied the young man, going to them; 'and since you seek me, take me, but allow these to go,' he added, pointing to his disciples still retained as prisoners.
The officer made a sign to the soldiers who did not seem as yet completely reassured; they approached Jesus, however, to bind him, whilst he said to them mildly: 'You came here armed with swords and sticks to take me, as if I were a malefactor, and yet, I sat amidst you every day in the temple, praying, and you did not arrest me.'
Then, of himself, he tendered his hands to the cords with which they bound him. The cowardly disciples of the young man had not had the courage to defend him; they dared not even accompany him to his prison; and the moment they were released by the soldiers, they fled on all sides. A mournful smile crossed the lips of Jesus, when he found himself thus betrayed and abandoned by those he had so loved, and whom he believed his friends.
Genevieve, hidden by the shade of an olive tree, could not restrain tears of grief and indignation on seeing these men so miserably abandon Jesus; she comprehended why the doctors of the law and the high priests, instead of arresting him in open day, had arrested him during the night; they feared the rage of the people and of the resolute men like Banaias; these would not have allowed him to be carried off without resistance, the friend of the poor and the afflicted.