In the quest, the sky yielded him nothing; it was blue, very blue, and full of twittering swallows—so was the sky over the city.
Further on, out of the woods at his right hand, a breeze poured across the road, splashing him with a wave of sweet smells, blent of roses and consuming spices. He stopped, as did others, looking the way the breeze came.
“A garden over there?” he said, to a man at his elbow.
“Rather some priestly ceremony in performance—something to Diana, or Pan, or a deity of the woods.”
The answer was in his mother tongue. Ben-Hur gave the speaker a surprised look.
“A Hebrew?” he asked him.
The man replied with a deferential smile,
“I was born within a stone’s-throw of the market-place in Jerusalem.”
Ben-Hur was proceeding to further speech, when the crowd surged forward, thrusting him out on the side of the walk next the woods, and carrying the stranger away. The customary gown and staff, a brown cloth on the head tied by a yellow rope, and a strong Judean face to avouch the garments of honest right, remained in the young man’s mind, a kind of summary of the man.
This took place at a point where a path into the woods began, offering a happy escape from the noisy processions. Ben-Hur availed himself of the offer.