“It wasn’t open to-day!” broke in one fellow. “But we got in all the same. Eh, comrades?”
“Shut up!” commanded Red Errico, and he was supported by others hissing for silence. “Can’t you wait till Signor Forza has finished?”
“I am not here to make a long speech, friends,” Mario said, smiling. “It is only that I thought it would be good for all of us to have one more calm look at the faces in this group of famous workingmen. They were toilers, like yourselves, those men seated on each side of Christ. It is the hour before Gethsemane. He is going to leave them soon, to be nailed to the cross for telling the world that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and other things just as true. See what honest faces those men have—all but one! Do you see which this is? Can you point out Judas the traitor?”
“Yes, yes!” a score of voices answered.
“The one next to Christ.”
“Donkey! There’s one on each side of Him!”
“He of the long nose.”
“The fellow that’s grasping the bag of silver!”
“Give us more light!” cried others in the rear of the throng. “We can’t see much!”
Mario told them to pull back the hangings at the windows, and this was done so promptly and with such vigour by many hands that some of the curtains were jerked from their fastenings.