Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/137

Rh window-seat with spontaneous eagerness to see what the clamour might portend.

But it could not be that Caiaphas, the restless, arrogant, wrath-eaten Caiaphas, would long be silent.

With a deep, harsh, derisive laugh he called out to Nicodemus impatiently: "What seest thou? Is it, perchance, Lazarus restored by the Son of God?" Nicodemus turned his head for one moment in answer. "I see naught but a vociferating crowd assembled round a beggar man." Then, stretching farther out of the window, he called to one of the soldiers who always stood at the entrance of Caiaphas's door: "Wherefore all this tumult?"

"It is the beggar Rabneh, who hath returned from the Pool of Siloam," replied the soldier. "They say it is he that was blind and whose sight was restored by the Nazarene."

"Is it in truth so? Is it he?" asked Nicodemus, as softly as the distance would permit, lest Caiaphas should hear; but no whisper escaped the alert ears of the suspicious High Priest.

"Peace, thou fool!" he roared. "How can it be he?"

But Nicodemus paid no heed. The crowd had assembled beneath the window, gabbling furiously, quarrelling, vociferating, howling with praise, or shrieking in derision, and thronging around a poorly clad man, some shouting: "How were thine eyes opened?" others crying out: "It is not he, it is another like him, it is not he."

"Where, then, is the beggar we have often seen on the wayside, begging, and ofttimes entreating the Christ; where is he, if this be not the man?"