“But thy father and mother, Judas, were they not good people?”
Judas winked his eye, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. And as he shook his head his congealed wide open eye shook in its orbit and gazed dumbly:
“And who was my father? Perhaps the man who chastised me when I was a child, perhaps the devil, or a goat or a rooster. Can Judas know with whom his mother shared her couch? Judas has many fathers. Of whom speak you?”
But at this the ire of all was aroused, for they greatly honored their parents, and Matthew, thoroughly versed in the Scriptures, sternly repeated the words of Solomon:
“He who speaks ill of his father and his mother, his lamp will be extinguished in utter darkness.”
And John of Zebedee inquired contemptuously: “And how about us? What evil wilt thou say about us, Judas of Kerioth?”
But he, with pretended fear, threw up his hands, cringing and whining like a beggar vainly praying alms from a passer-by:
“Ah! Wouldst thou tempt poor Judas? Mock poor Judas, deceive poor guileless Judas?”
While one side of his face was distorted in apish grimaces, the other seemed serious and stern and the never-closed eye peered mutely and vaguely into space. Above all others, and most loudly, Simon Peter was wont to laugh at his jests. But once it happened that with a sudden frown he paused and hastily took Judas aside, almost dragging him by his sleeve:
“And Jesus? What thinkest thou of Jesus?” he inquired in a loud whisper bending over him. “But no jesting now, I pray thee.”