Old Judas, the venerable Lechner, was so much moved that they were obliged to support him down the stairs: Judas weeping over Christ! The loyal man had suffered unutterably from the necessity of playing the traitor's part--the treachery now practised toward the sacred cause by the personator of Christ himself--fairly broke his heart! "That I must live to witness this!" he murmured, wringing his hands as he descended the steps. But Thomas Rendner shook his handsome head and mournfully repeated the momentous words of Pilate: "What is truth?" With tears in his eyes, he held out his sinewy right hand consolingly to Caiaphas.
"Don't take it so much to heart, Burgomaster; God is still with us!" Then he cast a sorrowful glance toward the corner of the room. "Poor Mary! I always thought so!" he muttered compassionately, under his breath, and followed the others.
The burgomaster and Ludwig were left behind alone and followed the direction of Rendner's glance. There--it almost broke their hearts--there sat the burgomaster's sister--the "Mary" in the corner, with her hands clasped in her lap, the very attitude in which she waited for the body of her Crucified Son.
"Poor sister," said the burgomaster, deeply moved. "For what are you waiting? They will never bring him to you again."
"He will come back, the poor martyr!" she replied, her large eyes gazing with prophetic earnestness into vacancy. "He will come, weary and wounded--perhaps betrayed by all."
"Then I will have nothing to do with him," said the burgomaster in a low, firm tone.
"You can do as you please, you are a man. But I, who have so long personated his mother--I will wait and receive and comfort him, as a mother cheers her erring child."
"Oh, Anastasia!" A cry of pain escaped Ludwig's lips, and, overwhelmed by emotion, he turned away.
The burgomaster, with tender sympathy, laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"Ah, sister, Freyer is not worthy that you should love him so!"