Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/209

Rh synagogues and flout us? Thou and I, Annas, may go and live in some mean cottage in Nazareth, for it seemeth that out of that village cometh greatness. Thinkest with me, Annas?"

"I think," said Annas, talking for once without prevarication and without affectation, but with the experience of age and many years in a position of responsibility, "that, in thy hate of the Nazarene thou dost make too much of this thing."

"Hate? Thou hast well said hate, Annas," retorted Caiaphas, in his anger forgetting all but his own malevolence. "I hate Him for His presumptuous teachings, for His scheming and pretended simple ways that do entangle this foolish Jewish people. Doth He think, because He cajoleth fools and beggars with His quackeries, that I, great Caiaphas, can be deceived? Ah! He shall see yet who is the stronger. He shall yet learn that those who cross the path of the High Priest are but brushed aside."

And Caiaphas made a gesture as though he raised and tossed aside some obstacle from his path. No offended elephant waiting to tusk his enemy, then seize him in his trunk and hurl him into the air, could have presented a more terrible aspect of rage and fury. Annas's heart recoiled within him at the remembrance that this man was the husband of his daughter.

"Poor Rebekah, methinks she too must suffer," he murmured.

Then, while the two men were preparing to leave the room, gathering up parchments, placing others aside, there rose on the air once more the cries of: