'It's true! within he is all rage and hatred, tho' outside he is so serene and compassionating.'
'He is a bashful tiger invested with a lamb's skin.'
At these insulting words Jesus contented himself with smiling mournfully and shaking his head; this movement made the blood fall in a spray around him, for the wounds made on his forehead by the thorns still bled.
At sight of this blood, Genevieve could not help murmuring to herself the chorus of the children of the mistletoe, mentioned in the recitals of her husband's ancestors:
'Flow, flow, blood of the captive! Fall, fall, incarnate dew! Germinate and grow, avenging harvest!'
'Oh,' said Genevieve to herself, 'the blood of this innocent, of this martyr, so basely abandoned by his friends, by this people, poor and oppressed, whom he cherished, this blood will return on them and their children. But may it also fertilize the bloody harvest of vengeance.'
The Romans, exasperated by the heavenly patience of Jesus, knew not what to think of to conquer him. Neither insults nor threats could move him, so one of the soldiers snatched from his hand the stick he continued to hold mechanically and broke it on his head, exclaiming,
'You will, perhaps, give some signs of life, statue of flesh and bones!' but Jesus, having at first bowed his head beneath the blow, raised it, casting a look of pardon on the one who had struck him. No doubt this ineffable sweetness intimidated or embarrassed the barbarians, for one of them, detaching his scarf, bandaged the eyes of the young man of Nazareth, saying to him:
'O great king! thy respectful subjects are not worthy to support thy glance!'
When Jesus had his eyes thus bandaged, the idea of a ferocious baseness struck the mind of the Romans; one of them approached the victim, gave him a slap in the face and said to him, bursting into a laugh: