The two vagabonds remained silent, shaking their heads, and Genevieve left them, saying to herself with profound grief:
'Shall I encounter, then, everywhere nothing but ingratitude, forgetfulness, treason and cowardice? Oh! it is not the body of Jesus that will be crucified, it will be his heart.'
The slave hastened to join the soldiers who were approaching the house of Pontius Pilate.—At the moment she doubled her pace, she remarked a sort of tumult amongst the Jerusalem militia, which suddenly stopped. She mounted on a bench and saw Banaias alone at the entrance of a narrow arcade which the soldiers had to cross to reach the governor's house, audaciously barring the passage, brandishing his long stick terminated by a knob of iron.
'Ah! this one at least does not abandon him he calls his friend!' thought Genevieve.
'By the shoulders of Samson!' cried Banaias in his loud voice, 'if you do not instantly set our friend at liberty, militia of Beelzebub! I'll beat you as dry as the flail beats the wheat on the barn floor! Ah! if I had but time to collect a band of companions as resolute as myself to defend our friend of Nazareth, ‘tis an order I would give you instead of a simple prayer, and this simple prayer I repeat: set our friend at liberty, or else by the jawbone used by Samson, I will destroy you all like he destroyed the Philistines!'
'Do you hear the wretch! he calls this audacious menace a prayer!' exclaimed the officer commanding the militia, who prudently kept himself in the middle of his troop; 'run your lances through the miserable; strike him with your swords if he does not make way for you!'
The Jerusalem militia was not a very valiant troop, for they had hesitated before arresting Jesus, who advanced towards them, alone and disarmed: so that, despite the orders of their chief, they remained a moment undecided before the menacing attitude of Banaias.
In vain did Jesus, whose firm and gentle voice was heard by Genevieve, endeavor to appease his defender, and entreat him to retire. Banaias resumed in a threatening tone, thus replying to the supplications of the young Nazarene:
'Do not trouble yourself about me, friend; you are a man of peace and quietness. I am a man of violence and battle, when the feeble are to be protected. Let me alone. I will stop these wicked soldiers here, until the noise of the tumult has apprised and brought my companions; and then, by the five hundred concubines of Solomon, who danced before him, you shall see these devils of the militia dance to the tune of our knobbed sticks, keeping time on their helmets and cuirasses.'
'How much longer will you suffer yourselves to be insulted by a single man, you cowardly dogs?' exclaimed the officer to his men.