On the Eve of the Passover and Easter, the Scribe arrived at the outer fringe of the rainbow-robed, fur-capped throng that shook in passionate lamentation before that Titanic fragment of Temple Wall, which is the sole relic of Israel's national glories. Roaring billows of hysterical prayer beat against the monstrous, symmetric blocks, quarried by King Solomon's servants and smoothed by the kisses of the generations. A Fatherland lost eighteen hundred years ago, and still this strange indomitable race hoped on!
"Hasten, hasten, O Redeemer of Zion."
And from amid the mourners, one tall, stately figure, robed in purple velvet, turned his face to the Scribe, saying, with out-stretched hand and in a voice of ineffable love—
"Shalom Aleichem."
And the Scribe was shaken, for lo! it was the face of the Christ.
IV
Did he haunt the Wailing Wall, then, sharing the woe of his brethren? For in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the Scribe found him not.
V
The Scribe had slipt in half disguised: no Jew being allowed even in the courtyard or the precincts of the sacred place. His first open attempt had been frustrated by the Turkish soldiers who kept the narrow approach to the courtyard. "Rüh! Emshi!" they had shouted fiercely, and the Scribe recklessly refusing to turn back had been expelled by violence. A blessing in disguise, his friends had told him, for should the Greek-Church fanatics have become aware of him, he might have perished in a miniature Holy War. And as he fought his way through the crowd to gain the shelter of a balcony, he felt indeed that one ugly rush would suffice to crush him.