“John, is that you?”
“And is that you, Peter?” answered the other, pausing, and by the voice Peter recognised the traitor. “Peter, why did you not run away together with the others?”
Peter stopped and said with contempt:
“Leave me, Satan!”
Judas began to laugh, and paying no further attention to Peter, he advanced where the torches were flashing dimly and where the clanking of the weapons mingled with the footsteps. Peter followed him cautiously, and thus they entered the court of the high priest almost simultaneously and mingled in the crowd of the priests who were warming themselves at the bonfires. Judas warmed his bony hands morosely at the bonfire and heard Peter saying loudly somewhere behind him:
“No, I do not know Him.”
But it was evident that they were insisting there that he was one of the disciples of Jesus, for Peter repeated still louder: “But I do not understand what you are saying.”
Without turning around, and smiling involuntarily, Judas shook his head affirmatively and muttered:
“That’s right, Peter! Do not give up the place near Jesus to any one.”
And he did not see the frightened Peter walk away from the courtyard. And from that night until the very death of Jesus, Judas did not see a single one of the disciples of Jesus near Him; and amid all that multitude there were only two, inseparable until death, strangely bound together by sufferings—He who had been betrayed to abuse and torture and he who had betrayed Him. Like brothers, they both, the Betrayed and the betrayer, drank out of the same cup of sufferings, and the fiery liquid burned equally the pure and the impure lips.