In the first sweet hours of the restful night Isidore became aware that
he was walking among strange fields on a hillside, and on the top of a
hill some distance away there were the white walls and low flat-roofed
houses of a little town; and some one was speaking to him and saying,
"These are the fields in which the Shepherds watched, and that rocky
pathway leads up the slope to Bethlehem."
[Illustration: "_These are the fields in which the Shepherds watched_"]
At the sound of the voice Isidore hastily looked round, and behind him
was the pilgrim, and yet he knew that it was not truly the pilgrim, but
an Angel disguised in pilgrim's weeds. And when he would have fallen
at the Angel's feet, the Angel stopped him and said, "Be not afraid; I
have been sent to show thee all the holy places that thy heart has
longed to see."
On valley and hill and field and stream there now shone so clear and
wonderful a light that even a long way off the very flowers by the
roadside were distinctly visible. Without effort and without weariness
Isidore glided from place to place as though it were a dream. And I
cannot tell the half of what he saw, for the Angel took him to the
village where Jesus was a little child, which is called Nazareth, "the
flower-village;" and he showed him the River Jordan flowing through
dark green woods, and Hermon the high mountain, glittering with snow
(and the snow of that mountain is exceeding old), and the blue Lake of
Gennesareth, with its fishing-craft, and the busy town of Capernaum on
the great road to Damascus, and Nain where Jesus watched the little
children playing at funerals and marriages in the market-place, and the
wilderness where He was with the wild beasts, and Bethany where Lazarus
lived and died and was brought to life again (and in the fields of
Bethany Isidore gathered a bunch of wild flowers), and Jerusalem the
holy city, and Gethsemane with its aged silver-grey olive-trees, and
the hill of Calvary, where in the darkness a great cry went up to
heaven: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" and the new tomb in the white rock
among the myrtles and rose-trees in the garden.
There was no place that Isidore had desired to see that was denied to
him. And in all these places he saw the children's children of the
children of those who had looked on the face of the Saviour--men and
women and little ones--going to and fro in strangely coloured clothing,
in the manner of those who had sat down on the green grass and been fed
with bread and fishes. And at the thought of this Isidore wept.
"Why dost thou weep?" the Angel asked.
"I weep that I was not alive to look on the face of the Lord."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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