But he waved his hands in simulated terror, whined, and bowed like a beggar, who has in vain asked an alms of a passer-by: “Ah! they are tempting poor Judas! They are laughing at him, they wish to take in the poor, trusting Judas!” And while one side of his face was crinkled up in buffooning grimaces, the other side wagged sternly and severely, and the never-closing eye looked out in a broad stare.
More and louder than any laughed Simon Peter at the jokes of Judas Iscariot. But once it happened that he suddenly frowned, and became silent and sad, and hastily dragging Judas aside by the sleeve, he bent down, and asked in a hoarse whisper—
“But Jesus? What do you think of Jesus? Speak seriously, I entreat you.”
Judas cast on him a malign glance.
“And what do you think?”
Peter whispered with awe and gladness—
“I think that He is the son of the living God.”
“Then why do you ask? What can Judas tell you, whose father was a goat?”
“But do you love Him? You do not seem to love any one, Judas.”
And with the same strange malignity, Iscariot blurted out abruptly and sharply: “I do.”