Chapter 22

As the captive was tugged past his weeping friends, he turned his face toward them compassionately. They slowly followed the crowd with irresolute steps as if they were uncertain what to do; all but the gigantic fellow, who turned the other way and began to walk rapidly, lurchingly toward the west. Apparently he had no mind for attending the execution. Mencius followed him with his eyes, trying to contrive a story that might explain the man’s conduct. Was he, for all his physical strength, a coward? Or had the condemnation of his hero driven him to utter stampede?…Now a youngish chap, who had been in the company of the Galilean’s friends, hurried past in the direction taken by the big man. Mencius expected the young fellow to overtake him, but he made no effort to do so. He continued to follow at a distance.

There was no occasion now for any hurry in the delivery of the Emperor’s message to Marcellus Gallio, whose day’s work had been cut out for him. It would take hours to complete it. Mencius had never seen a crucifixion and didn’t intend to see one.

He walked the short distance to the Embassy stables. The place was practically deserted. A hostler saddled Brutus and led him out. Mencius mounted and started for the inn. The usual traffic clattered in the street. Jerusalem had resumed her customary activities. The food-markets were crowded with shrilly bargaining shoppers. Somewhere, in an out-of-the-way place, nails were being driven through the hands and feet of a man whose only offence was his confessed devotion to the truth. The quarrelling markets, with their short measures, short weights, short change, and short tempers, were still doing business in the old way, the merchants trying to sell bad produce and the customers trying to pay for it with bad coinage; and had any one of them adhered to the truth—either as a buyer or seller—he would soon have nothing left but his impracticable idea. The truth was a luxury that nobody could afford. Mencius himself—he had to admit—couldn’t afford it: a Proconsul must be diplomatic. Pontius Pilate couldn’t afford it: a resolve on his part to abide by the truth would have meant his prompt recall from his Prefecture. And had old Tiberius decided to tell the truth he would have lost his Empire. It was that kind of a world.

The brave Galilean, reflected Mencius, had accomplished nothing. He had thrown away his life to no purpose at all. The world wasn’t ready to hear his voice. There never had been a time, in human history, when the world would have listened to his voice. And—there never would be such a time. It was too much to expect. Humanity had no capacity for moral grandeur. This Jesus had misjudged the world. By sunset, this evening, he would be dead and buried. And by next week he would have been forgotten, except by a little handful of little people in a poverty-cursed little hinterland.

* * * * *