For a moment there was silence. Amazement seized the crowd at sight of this noble Roman lady giving honor to the condemned. He turned his eyes to her poor sick face, and his lips began to move, as if blessing her. Antea fell again on the pillow of the litter; she felt that a sea of light, of goodness, of grace, of consolation, of hope, of happiness, was falling on her.
"Thou art Truth," whispered she, a second time.
Then a new wave of tears came to her eyes.
But they pushed him forward to a place a few tens of steps distant from the litter; on that place stood already the uprights of crosses, fixed in a cleft of the rocky platform. The crowd concealed him again; but, since that place was elevated considerably, Antea soon saw his pale face and the crown of thorns. The legionaries turned once more toward the rabble, which they clubbed away, lest it might interrupt the execution. They began then to fasten the two thieves to the side crosses. The third cross stood in the middle; to the top of it was fastened, with a nail, a white card which the growing wind pulled and raised. When soldiers, approaching the Nazarene at last, began to undress him, shouts rose in the crowds: "King! king! do not yield! King, where are thy legions? Defend thyself!" At moments laughter burst forth,—laughter that bore away the multitude till on a sudden the whole stony height resounded with one roar. Then they stretched him face upward on the ground, to nail his hands to the arms of the cross, and raise him afterward with it to the main pillar.
Thereupon some man, in a white tunic, standing not far from the litter, cast himself on the earth suddenly, gathered dust and bits of stone on his head, and cried in a shrill despairing voice, "I was a leper, and he cured me; why do ye crucify him?"
Antea's face became white as a kerchief.
"He cured that man; dost hear, Caius?" said she.
"Dost wish to return?" asked Cinna.
"No! I will remain here!"
But a wild and boundless despair seized Cinna because he had not called the Nazarene to his house to cure Antea.