"At eleven," said the merchant's wife, in low tones. "He will be out all day."
"My dear," says her husband, as he rejoined her, "and who was the young gentleman?"
"Why, I do not know, darling. I never saw him before."
"He was certainly very civil. I wish there were more like him. And a fine looking young fellow, too!"
"Was he? I did not notice," said the merchant's wife, indifferently.
And Jurgen saw and heard and regarded the departing trio ruefully. It seemed to him incredible the world should be going on just as it went before he ventured into the Druid forest.
He paused before a crucifix, and he knelt and looked up wistfully.
"If one could only know," says Jurgen, "what really happened in
Judea! How immensely would matters be simplified, if anyone but knew
the truth about You, Man upon the Cross!"
Now the Bishop of Merion passed him, coming from celebration of the early mass. "My Lord Bishop," says Jurgen, simply, "can you tell me the truth about this Christ?"
"Why, indeed, Messire de Logreus," replied the Bishop, "one cannot but sympathize with Pilate in thinking that the truth about Him is very hard to get at, even nowadays. Was He Melchisedek, or Shem, or Adam? or was He verily the Logos? and in that event, what sort of a something was the Logos? Granted He was a god, were the Arians or the Sabellians in the right? had He existed always, co-substantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or was He a creation of the Father, a kind of Israelitic Zagreus? Was He the husband of Acharamoth, that degraded Sophia, as the Valentinians aver? or the son of Pantherus, as say the Jews? or Kalakau, as contends Basilidês? or was it, as the Docetês taught, only a tinted cloud in the shape of a man that went from Jordan to Golgotha? Or were the Merinthians right? These are a few of the questions, Messire de Logreus, which naturally arise. And not all of them are to be settled out of hand."
Thus speaking, the gallant prelate bowed, then raised three fingers in benediction, and so quitted Jurgen, who was still kneeling before the crucifix.