The Centurion's Story (MacFarlane)/Chapter 2
And now, Marcus, what shall I say? Out of the foolish, fond heart of me, like the babblings of a child, I wrote unto thee by the Egyptian post of this Jew who had interested me. After all, it was but a passing fancy. I thought that I had done with him when I had done with writing to you, but by the gods, no! If you could see me now, Marcus, you would know that I have lived ten thousand years since I wrote last.
In what terms shall a man write down that he has looked upon the face of God and in what language translate the strange emotions that possess him? I have seen a light that was not of the sun and yet was of a brightness surpassing the brightness of day upon the desert. I am confused and humbled. I have travelled far and seen much and upon all that I have seen it has been my habit to make reflection and converse regarding it, and if it seemed worth while, to make it the subject of conference with those more intelligent than myself. Things that seemed to me wonderful and passing knowledge I have come either to understand or to catalogue as occupying some fit and proper place in the vast unsearched areas of the cosmos beyond the power of man to know.
But all mystery and all marvel is to-day as nothing. For, Marcus, I have looked upon the face of the Inscrutable. My soul has been bathed in mystery, I have seen the spirit of the cosmos itself, or indeed I must say himself, for the spirit is a man, and the man is God. At least so it seems to me. But there has been none to teach me. If there be a school or cult that did forecast the mystery of last night, and indeed methinks I see signs that such there is, I am not yet admitted to their circles.
Remember that I write thee wide-eyed; that the lids have not fallen over these wondering orbs of mine since I looked into the face of the living Jew, who, three days before, I saw bound with the spell of death, wrapped in the cerements of the grave and as dead, I swear, Marcus, as any mummy in the pyramids that peep over thy shoulder as thou readst what I write. You will not question that I am disturbed, but rather ask if I but interpret the facts aright? Do I apprehend the phenomenon? Have I seen what I think I saw, or do I but dream and totter into dotage?
Let me then set down in order the events which have transpired in these three marvellous nights since last I wrote to you and you yourself shall judge.
To begin with, we lifted the noble Jew down from the cross with the blood of a spear thrust that had searched his heart drying on the glistering white side of him. Evening was coming and there was a great hubbub and knocking about of old graybeards among the Jews. The morrow was one of their high days it seemed, and it would be an unclean thing for the dead to hang upon the cross over this day, and so they were for hustling them into graves at once. Off they bundled to Pilate, which was agreeable enough to me, for I am always glad to be rid of such a business. To save time and vent my spite upon certain curiosity seekers, I turned some score of them to digging graves in front of the crosses. They howled and protested, but the stout spat of the flat of the spear with an occasional prod with the point of it kept them sweating at their work.
Before we were finished, back came a servant of that sharp dog Pilate to know of me if the Jew were really dead. The old fox it seems has done nothing but think of this young prophet since the trial and his mind was sticking at some talk of women that the man was a god and could not die. It was this superstition that brought the message from Pilate's wife I told you of, and made him wish to save the Jew, if such might be; but Pilate is an obstinate dog and once he has chosen a course he will walk in it to the turn of the road. Since he had delivered the man up to death, he would have no halfway measures; he would have him so dead that if he come back it will be like a ghost, for Pilate is a crass rascal and knows that ghosts are harmful only in dreams.
"What, is he dead yet?" said the officer of Pilate, a Phrygian whom I have always despised. "He is still dead," I answered. The fellow looked mystified. May the divine Tiberius forgive me this jest at the fears of one of his worthy procurators. For, as you shall see, Pilate's haunting, suspicious fear was not that we had killed him, for he knew I would see well to that, but that he should remain dead when once he was slain. What a foolish fear! what an idle superstition! What a power in life this Jew must have been that he could haunt with fears when he was dead those who hated him and torture them with horrid suspense lest he break the seal of death and move again among the people or cast a spell so strong that thrones would crumble and empires fall away. However, the thrust of my keen wit broke its point upon the thick skull of the Phrygian and the Procurator knows not that I did jest with his fears. The Phrygian, however, knows death as well as another, for murder is one-half his trade, I know, and he looked beyond me to the grave-flesh upon the cross and knew it for what it was.
Soon the Jews were hustling back with the order from Pilate to bury the dead, but one of my graves was doomed to emptiness unless I knock the bothersome Annas on the head and tumble him into it, and right well I had a mind to do it. For with those who came from Pilate was a rich Jew named Joseph, who seemed to be of the party of the Galileans to which this Jesus belonged. Anyway, he had a scroll from Pilate commanding me to give him the body of Jesus to be laid in a newly hewn tomb in his garden on the western slopes of Olivet. The Phrygian was come back also with Pilate's signet ring and the command of the Procurator to see the body sealed within the tomb and mount guard upon it for three full days. It was about the eleventh hour and the long march around the city and down the dry bed of a spring brook till we found the way across from the temple and leading up the sides of Olivet to the garden, made it near sunset when the tomb was closed and sealed.
It was not an imposing funeral cortège. My half dozen men muttering over the dusty way, four or five stout fishermen of Galilee who bore the dead, this Joseph of the garden, and the handful of women who talked in low tones and wailed in high ones, and as we climbed the hill were saying how often the Jew himself had come over this pathway with his disciples to find repose at night in this very garden of Joseph where now they made his tomb.
We laid the body in the inner crypt and after I had examined carefully the outer chamber, that it was all hewn from solid rock, my stout fellows rolled the heavy stone in its well-proportioned groove to the door, dropped it into the niche and across the stone I stretched a purple cord that spoke of the imperial dignities, and upon either end of the cord smeared the wax and made the imprint of Pilate's signet ring. I bade the soldiers turn their faces from me while I myself did the foolish thing, for I knew the grinning rascals mocked me, especially that black-browed Stephen whose own spear had pierced the prophet's heart. Too often he had given the death thrust not to know when it was well done, and here, while the very heavens mocked and while the deep, breaking sobs of women chanted a dirge of death, we were making confession of a procurator's shameful fear. Do I err, Marcus, when I set you this down in such painful detail? I trow not; for those trivialities, impressed upon me then because of their shameful uselessness, now burn into my memory.
I remained about the garden until the watch had been changed and saw all disposed for the night, then made the best of my way down the darkened sides of the valley and up by the Pool of the Angel to the temple mound and thence to the tower where, weary as I was, I could not refrain from writing you of the death of the Jew.
It was a strange thing that on the morrow the grove and the garden cast a spell over me. I could not wait for the guard to report but myself was there and saw the watch changed. All was as we had left it.
The next day was the Jewish Sabbath and again I found myself in the garden when the morning watch was changed. "All's well," they reported. "Hath nothing chanced?" "No," they answered, stolidly. I was foolish, Marcus. I was provoked with them for their indifference. Why had not something chanced? "Have you seen nought?" I asked. "No," they said, "except some women who come and sit under yonder tree and weep and wail through the night." "Where are they?" I asked. "I will talk to them." "They are gone," they answered. "There are two of them. They come at night. They have been here these two nights now." "Do you see no men about?" I queried. "No," they answered, "none come."
I came in with the men who had been relieved but in my own mind I made appointment to keep the watch that last night myself, and it is well, too, Marcus, that I did, for what wonder was wrought in yonder garden with its gnarled olive-trees, with its feebly dripping fountains and with its few and scraggly flowers I cannot of a verity say, but something wonderful, which I now try to describe to thee, my thoughtful friend, while yet it seems to make its largest impression on my mind.
I reached the garden in the evening, just at sunset. The rays stealing in through an opening in the trees fell full upon the hard surface of the stony crypt and were given back in a gleam of gold. At the moment I thought it was curious, but now it seems to me prophetic as I recall what golden light I saw streaming from that crypt ere yet another day had dawned. I looked to the purple cord and to the seals of Pilate upon it. They were intact.
Some foolish weakness made me lean an ear against the stone and listen. All was still. My senses detected nothing but the chill of the rock and the heavy odour of the pounds upon pounds of spices in which the Jews swathe the bodies of their respected dead. And then, inquiring where the women were wont to appear, I started that way. It was up the hill a stone's cast, and along beneath the brow of it, in another garden, like the last but more secluded. Here, beneath heavy shade, one might pass the night in this hospitable atmosphere with no more than a cloak between his body and the ground and the fold of a tunic between him and the stars. There was but one woman. Have you ever observed, Marcus, that the sound of one woman weeping, somehow, gives the impression that there are two? So my soldiers had been fooled. Here this one was, shrouded in the dusk. I spoke to her and she ceased her sobbing at once and responded to my address in startled tones. "Why do you weep?" I asked. "Was he your brother?" "No," she answered, "no, but he was like a brother unto me and something more. I loved him, but as one would love God, whom indeed we had thought he was."
This was said in tones of the most complete dejection 'and melting sadness that ever I had listened to. With 'weeping through the night, the woman's soul had become so tuned to grief, that her sobs were a melting symphony of sorrow, like to which mine ears had never listened before.
"You were a disciple of his?" I asked.
"Ten thousand demons held me in a bitter thrall," she answered. "He set me free and then he made me quit of every grief till his death at the hands of wicked, shameful men came, striking a dirge of sorrow from every chord of this sad heart of mine." "Why do you weep here?" I asked. "Because the soldiers hinder me," she said. "To-morrow that foolish word of the priests that he will rise again will be made false. The guard will be removed and we may complete the preparation of his dear body for its last rest."
The woman talked like a poet, but she sorrowed like a woman and I had respect enough for her grief to leave her and go on my way to the brow of the hill where for hours I walked amid the stars and reflected. My mind went back over all the past. I remembered how when a boy, I floated my puny ships upon the sea at Puteoli while I cast the enlarging eye of wonder upon the sails that came over the horizon. As I saw them come, my childish soul questioned what lay beyond. I have travelled far since then. Gaul and Britain and the forests of the Danube have been familiar ground to me. My heels have brushed the dew from the grasses in the far North beyond the great Scythian Sea. They have stirred the dust of the great African desert and once you and I waded knee-deep into the yellow tide of the Euphrates. Yes, I have travelled far and yet, wide-eyed, with childish wonder in my mind, I still marvel that the curve of the horizon balks me. What is behind it? Ah, that is the question.
I saw the Jew die two yesterdays agone. Did he die or did only the soul of him sink behind the horizon, as in my boyhood days I saw the proud galley sink behind the curve at sunset into other seas than mine own eyes looked upon. I have tried to frame my thoughts at times in the school of Epicurus to say that death is death and let it go at that, but Epicurus takes no account of the curve of the horizon. To say the ship ceases to be when it drops over the watery hill is not reasonable and to say that our friends cease to be when they drop out of sight of our childish, wondering eyes is not an answer that has commended itself to my mind for long at a time. I have held, rather, with Pythagoras that the soul that is dead soars like the Phoenix.
While I wandered thus in the bright moonlight, I came upon a man, youthful but of a solid figure. As he stood, his face uplifted where the rays of the moon fell full upon it, I saw that it was the face of an artist. There was genius in his countenance. But across it too came a look of pain and trouble and sadness not native to his features; a certain horrible shadow of suffering that had been flung upon it suddenly. I thought I recognized him for that friend of the crucified Jew who had gone with him to the house of Annas. involuntarily, I stopped without disturbing him. He stood a dozen paces from me on a broad, flat rock. His hand was on a wall, his eyes wandered off, off over the gardens, along the slopes until they rested upon that spot where the iron heels of my soldiers clanked to and fro on the rocky way and kept watch over a tomb whose solid rock was not more cold than the flesh of that which lay therein.
As he turned the light played yet more freely upon his face and I saw in those features beside the shadow of suffering the growing fire of yearning, and while I looked I thought the yearning became a hope.
I spoke to him. He started, and then returned my salutation with that strange dignity which now and then I have met among the more kingly of these Jews. You know how mean and churlish are they with a Roman. This man seemed to recognize me.
"Centurion," he said, "you saw him die. What think you? Will he live again?"
"As all men live," I answered, "beyond the horizon; not here and not now."
And then the young man drew close to me; so close that I caught the smell of the tarred sheepskin fisher's coat with which he fought the chill of the midnight air.
"Centurion," he said, "I have seen this Jesus whom you slew"—I started at the word—"by order of Pilate, at the instance of the Jews, touch the hand of a girl that was cold in death and she arose and asked for food. I have seen him touch the bier of a man being borne to the grave and call upon him to rise and the man stood up and questioned whither they were taking him. Nay, more; I have stood before a rock-hewn tomb over the brow of this hill, scarce a dozen furlongs, and heard his voice wake one who for four days had slumbered in the cloying embrace of death, and the dead, swathed round about with grave-clothes, strode forth instinct with quivering life. How say you then that he shall only live as all men live again, amid the unsubstanced shades of the under world?"
The young man cherished a great hope. I approached nearer to him. I felt a sympathy for this dark-eyed youth. Somehow, he was like mine own son, that pretty boy Lucillus, whom thou dost so well remember, whose voice was like the chords of a deep-toned lyre and whose face was like a vision of mankind in its morning. My heart was touched with sympathy for the youth and for the great hope in his breast. I myself was wandering on the mountainside in the raw night air because the spell of the Galilean lingering after death had caught upon my nerves, and yet I knew the man was dead. I knew the tomb was cold and silent and tenantless save by withering flesh. I was but waiting for the rising sun to proclaim the folly of Pilate's precautions, so I sought to rescue the young man from his delusions.
"Young man," I said, "among the Piets, far to the north in Britain, I have seen the bard, chanting the battle-songs of a nation, call back to life the dead warrior by the very fervour of his patriotic ecstasies. But the man had never died. The bard only called him back from the slower reaches of the dark river's flow before the swifter tides had gripped his soul. Yet the cry went out that the seer had raised the dead. In Egypt I have seen a conjuring priest seem to give back the dead to life. Once, by the Euphrates, I saw it again. Yet it was not what it seemed but instead a mere necromancy. Given any man who has power to wake the multitudes to enthusiastic devotion by the magic of his spell, and he will have art enough to earn a reputation as one who can call back the dead to life. But let me tell yon, while I have travelled far, I have never yet seen the prophet or magician who could put one single, living spasm in that heart through which a Roman spear has passed."
The young man looked at me soberly and weighed my words. He marked them and gave them credence, and yet, as his mind ran over those thoughts of which he had spoken to me, said solemnly:
"But these of which I speak were no necromancy."
I still felt my sympathy growing. He was so modest and so serious. I dropped my hand upon a rose. I snapped it off and held it before him. While he looked, I dismantled it, petal by petal, the while he watched. "Look," I said, when nothing remained. "A moment before, a beautiful rose, its fragrance floating on the breeze, now its petals are borne upon the air to wither and be lost. It is gone. It will never be again. There will be other roses, but never that rose. So, your prophet is gone. There will be other prophets, but never that prophet again. Only in that great beyond of which we have spoken, our shades living on, there, it may be in a voiceless existence, his spirit may mingle with our own and we three, by such means as spirits use, may commune upon the nature of human existence."
The young man watched the breeze take up the rose petals one by one and bear them away, and then with a heavy sigh and a grave manner, as of one whose thoughts were far too deep for words, he turned and groped his way into the path that led down the mountainside to Jerusalem.
How long I stood lost in reverie I cannot tell, but by something I was recalled to myself and my surroundings. My first thought was that the wind had freshened. The whole mountainside seemed a-quiver. There was a rustle in every branch and bush and flower and petal and blade of grass. The very cells and tissues of my body had caught the thrill of something wonderful; of some rare potentiality that was cosmic in its measure. My mind was filled with a strange uplift and feeling as of a new world about to be born out of the past and all the future swung around me in a mighty circle.
In the east from where I stood, upon the brow of the hill, I caught the first gleam of the morning star. I listened for the wailing of the woman beneath the tree. It had stopped. Worn out with her long vigil, sobbing, she had taken her way homeward. As my eyes wandered over the hill to the garden and the tomb, I started, involuntarily, for a strange glow was there. At first, I thought the soldiers had kindled a fire, for the night was chill, and it was the glow of firelight on the branches that I saw, but then I saw there was no flickering, as of firelight, but rather a kind of golden cloud that hung over the spot like a halo, and strange perfumes, such as travellers observe in the Valley of Perfumes in Araby, were floating on the breeze. I breathed deep of them. My feet took wings as I hurried to the garden. Mysterious thoughts possessed me. Wonderful emotions stirred my soul. I ran faster and knew not why I ran. I seemed obeying some primary instinct of my nature and leaped from rock to rock, or clambered over walls, or tore through hedges of roses, or pushed under trees. Nothing could be permitted to impede my progress. Halfway there, I met a soldier, fleeing, wild-eyed. I drew my sword. The man cowered at my knee. He was speechless. Some vague horror possessed him. He cast terrible looks backward and muttered incoherent sounds. I could have slain him but that some wide spirit of peace seemed brooding over all. There was a spirit of life in the air and I could not kill. I sheathed my sword. The man rose up and cast one lingering, terrified look backward and stumbled on. He was fleeing in the opposite direction from the Antonian tower. Panic had possessed his soul. He knew not whither he was going nor cared.
In a dozen paces, I came face to face with another soldier, fleeing like the first. It was Stephen, the hard-featured Galician who plunged the spear in the side of the Jew upon the cross. I seized him by the throat and forced him to his knees. "Coward," I said, "what have you seen?" "Seen?" he muttered. "Seen?" he gasped. "We have seen nothing, but a golden cloud that hangs above the tomb and there is life within the tomb. We have heard a rustling within and the voices of men." "Is the seal broken?" I asked, and flung him from me and rushed to the tomb.
But when I reached the area of the golden cloud, I halted as quickly as I had started. There came to me a feeling that I trod on holy ground, that I was about to see that which it was not permitted a man to see. With slow and faltering steps, I approached the tomb. There was music in the air. I could not tell you whence it came, but now, as before I had caught that strange rustling sound on the whole hillside, there was a sound of celestial harmonies. I looked about me. My senses were abnormally quickened. Nothing escaped me. Far down below, I heard the passage of another frightened soldier as, with his arms, he clambered, clanking, over the wall, but all around me, the hillside was caught in the spell of music. Every branch and blade of grass and shivering petal of a flower was now vibrating with this strange, invisible, indescribable harmony that struck a rhythm from the heart-strings of my soul.
I approached the tomb and laid my hand upon the stone. It had been rolled back. It was no longer cold, but warm. I swear it was warm to the touch. My soul quaked within me, my heart stood still.
"If there is life within," I said, "that life shall come forth."
The next instant, I was bathed in a flood of light that streamed from the opening portals.
I looked!
And not only looked, but saw; not only saw but contemplated, for one long, glorious, transcendent instant of time, and then I turned away and sank to the ground. My body was collapsed in utter weakness.
What length of time I remained thus, inert, with closed eyes and ears, I know not, but when I opened my eyes, the golden cloud was gone. The music, too, was still, but for all that, the grove of the garden seemed thrilled with a presence that had not been before. The morning star was still shining, but the dawn hurried over the top of the hill, and I was aroused by the sensation of an earthquake. Twice it seemed to me the ground under me shuddered and then lifted, as with some mighty convulsion of nature. When the vibrations had ceased, I opened my eyes and cast about me in wonder, as upon a new world. Down the mountainside I heard the talk of women and presently that woman whom I met the night before beneath the tree. I recognized her by the tones of her voice. She seemed surprised to find the stone rolled away. In a moment, she had stooped and peered in—then with a great melting sob hurried down the mountainside. That she saw me as she came near I am almost certain, but she was blind with weeping, and though she passed me by a foot, gave no sign. Other women came and stood a little way apart in a group. They looked upon the tomb, but seemed afraid to draw near and after conversing in low tones turned about and went away. It was strange but I had no desire to enter the tomb. I had seen what I had seen and the memory of it was still thrilling me to the finger-tips with a sense of ineffable glory.
I heard the sound of hurried footsteps and up the path to the garden came the dark-eyed youth whom I had met in the night upon the mountain, followed closely by a great, shaggy haired giant of a Galilean whom I had seen with the Jew at the time of his arrest—he who smote off the ear of Malchus—and again as a member of the burial party. The youth was fleeter of foot and reaching the tomb first, stooped and looked in, and after him the larger man laboured heavily up the way. His was an impetuous soul, and he flung himself immediately into the chamber.
A sudden horrid suspicion entered my mind. Shall I ever forget the shock of it—the suspicion that after all I had been dreaming, or at most walking in my sleep. While I slept or dreamed my soldiers had been frightened away and the body stolen. My ecstasy was not real. My emotions were begotten of troubled slumber, and after all I was but a stupid dolt. The suspicion, while it lasted, gripped me sickeningly. For a moment my state of mind was pitiful. Then an aggressive spirit leaped up within me. I would see whether this were so, could be so, or not, and following them I, too, entered the tomb.
The air was heavy with the odour of spices which had been wrapped about the body. These were heaped in a careless pile where they might have fallen from an upright figure as a shroud was unwrapped. Unwrapped, I say, Marcus. Note that. For here the theory of a desecrated tomb halted abruptly. What body thieves would pause to remove the shroud? Would they not, fearful of discovery, snatch the corpse and make off with it swiftly in a frenzy of terror? However it might be desirable to lighten the body of this round hundred pounds of spices. So my grave-robbing theory got upon its legs and limped on a few paces, only to receive its death-blow as I looked upon the shroud itself, composed of strips of linen cloth, and folded in a pile, I swear to you, Marcus, as a woman might have done it. What body of Galilean fishermen stealing the body of a dead comrade from under the guard of Cæsar, and hurriedly casting off the weight of embalming materials, would have stopped to dress the crypt with folded linens like a fuller's bench? Would not rather the eager strength of ready fingers have torn these cloths from the body as it lay prostrate and have strewn them in dire confusion? You shall judge if this ordered heap of linen did not prove that what possessed me was no vagary.
But yet another piece of napery cried out to me, "The Jew is risen." This was the head-tire which I had seen upon his brow the night of his arrest, a piece of finest silk with brightly-coloured border. In the house of Annas I saw him bestow it upon the younger of the two men now in the tomb like a keepsake. When we took the body from the cross this same youth produced the head-tire and reverently bound it on the thorn-ridden brow. So it went into the tomb with him, and in truth, here it now lay neatly folded on the shelf of the crypt, its silken binding cord beside it. Since the world was fluid fire what grave-robber ever stopped to fold a head-tire? Write that down on the first piece of papyrus at hand, Marcus, and send it to me by swiftest military post, or I shall hold that never it was done, and that in this folded head-tire is a voice that cries out like thunder that my senses were not deceived and my memory does not stumble on the way to perfect recollection.
In truth, Marcus, all raillery forgot, what I saw confirmed the memory of my glorious vision.
The Jew was alive. His body thrilled again with life. His cold and pulseless corpse was not stolen from the tomb by the craven hearts of fear-stricken men, but he rose as men wake from slumber, and walked forth warm and glowing with the glister of a different existence, for the glory of the Man, which mine eyes had seen for a moment, was the glory of God himself. The ordered linen cloths, the heaped up myrrh and aloes, the creased and folded head-dress all proclaimed that angels had come to serve him and for a moment this rock-hewn crypt had become the tiring room of the son of the Immortal.
To set down what I saw in a single glance, to record what I felt in one uprising tide of conviction ere I had taken a second breath of the heavy air of the tomb has required, lo, these many words; but in my next glance I surveyed these close friends of the man. Was there a plot to steal his body, and they did not know? Were women hurrying to the place the instant the guard was relieved, with spices and perfumes? All the while the body was speeding off Galileeward through some unfrequented cleft of the northern hills? Ask thyself, Marcus, as I have done, can it be so considered?
The older of the two men stood, combing his gnarled beard with his fingers, a look of mingled doubt, misgiving and hope upon his face. The younger man's features wore a glow of joy and he spoke to the other excitedly in that harsh Galilean jargon, pointing to the napkin. I asked in the Greek tongue what he said, and he answered in the same: "The master's head-tire. You see how the two ends cross over and under the third as it lies. It was his custom. He has been in this tomb alive."
There was an exultant sob in the throat of the young man. His eyes were flashing brightness. The older man's face bore a puzzled, thoughtful expression. It seemed as though his had been the greater and more uncomforted sadness, and now hope took slower hold upon his soul, yet with each passing moment, I perceived a growing animation.
We walked out of the heavy air. All the hill was sparkling with sunshine and the roofs of the city were agleam with it. The two men, in animated conversation, after looking about them, hurried down the road to the city.
I lingered. The garden had become very dear to me.
My back was towards the empty tomb. I pondered it all, and oftenest my mind was at stand upon what the young man said about the folded napkin. How many, many times has my wife Afrania said: "No, Lucillus is not within, but he has visited his chamber since with my own hands I dressed it this morning. I know, for he cannot go in nor go out, he cannot take up or lay down a mirror nor move a perfume jar upon the table that I do not know he has been there." And so it seemed to me a thing most natural that this young intimate of Jesus should recognize in heaped up linens and folded head-tires the ministering living hand, the accustomed presence of his master, and say with solid assurance as I do now, He is alive.
I know, dear Marcus, that what I write is a jungle of confusion; yet I think there are no contradictions. I have communicated to you my state of mind, the progress of my thoughts, and what I saw in the tomb when I entered with the two men. Of all that happened I have carefully set down, even to the panicky cries of a flying soldier, and of all that I saw, except in that single ecstatic glance when, peering through the open door, in the streaming light of ineffable glory my eyes rested upon that which I have no words nor will to communicate to another, lest it be lost to me.
I have not yet made report to Pilate. Already the story that the body was stolen is current in the streets. I passed the last watch of soldiers, crouching, terror-stricken, in the hall as I came here. They gazed at me out of fear-troubled eyes. They expect death itself for their cowardice.
Before noon I must stand before Pilate and recount the events of the night. Should I falsely tell him that we were overpowered by a sudden rush of numbers and his body borne away by friends, he will believe me and dismiss me with a chiding. If I tell him truly, he will think I am lying, and fly into a rage, ordering me to Rome and to Cæsar probably to await the executioner's sword.
Wherefore if this be my last letter to thee, good friend, be assured once more of your comrade's good will and love. I know not what I face, I only know that all the old landmarks in life have changed for me since I have seen the grave give back the dead. If I live, life is a new thing to me. If not, it concerns me not greatly and I make no quarrel with my fate. May yours be happier. Vale.
Written from the Antonian Tower, in the eighteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar and the eighth year of Pontius Pilate, Governor of Syria.