Such was my model's simple narrative, the homely realism of which appealed to me on my most imaginative side, for through all its sordid details stood revealed to me the tragedy of the Wandering Jew. Was it Heine or another who said 'The people of Christ is the Christ of peoples'? At any rate, such was the idea that began to take possession of me as I painted away at the sorrow-haunted face of my much-tried model--to paint, not the Christ that I had started out to paint, but the Christ incarnated in a race, suffering--and who knew that He did not suffer over again?--in its Passion. Yes, Israel Quarriar could still be my model, but after another conception altogether. It was an idea that called for no change in what I had already done. For I had worked mainly upon the head, and now that I purposed to clothe the figure in its native gaberdine, there would be little to re-draw. And so I fell to work with renewed intensity, feeling even safer now that I was painting and interpreting a real thing than when I was trying to reconstruct retrospectively the sacred figure that had walked in Galilee. And no sooner had I fallen to work on this new conception than I found everywhere how old it was. It appeared even to have Scriptural warrant, for from a brief report of a historical-theological lecture by a Protestant German Professor I gleaned that many of the passages in the Prophets which had been interpreted as pointing to a coming Messiah, really applied to Israel, the people. Israel it was whom Isaiah, in that famous fifty-third chapter, had described as 'despised and rejected of men: a man of sorrows.' Israel it was who bore the sins of the world. 'He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.' Yes, Israel was the Man of Sorrows. And in this view the German Professor, I found, was only re-echoing Rabbinic opinion. My model proved a mine of lore upon this as upon so many other points. Even the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, he had never shared, he said--that the _Messhiach_ would come riding upon a white ass. Israel would be redeemed by itself, though his neighbours would have called the sentiment 'epicurean.' 'Whoever saves me is my _Messhiach_,' he declared suddenly, and plucked at my hand to kiss it. 'Now, you shock _me_,' I said, pushing him away. 'No, no,' he said; 'I agree with the word of the moujik: "the good people _are_ God."' 'Then I suppose you are what is called a Zionist,' I said. 'Yes,' he replied; 'now that you have saved me, I see that God works only through men. As for the _Messhiach_ on the white ass, they do not really believe it, but they won't let another believe otherwise. For my own part, when I say the prayer, "Blessed be Thou who restorest the dead to life," I always mean it of _you_.'