Mary of Magdala?... Did he speak to you of her?... Where is she?... I did not see her again; she left Antioch suddenly; and I lost trace of her.... SILANUS But why did she not listen to you?... Appius declared to me that she sets the men of this country, it is true, at naught, but shows herself not at all inexorable to the Roman knights.... VERUS It is one of those riddles of womankind which our duties as soldiers hardly leave us time to solve. She did not appear to dislike me; at least, the dislike which she affected was not without a harsh gentleness.... But there was mingled with it a certain incomprehensible dread, which made her timidly avoid me.... Besides, she seemed lately to have suffered a great sorrow, for which she has already, I hear, consoled herself more than once.... SILANUS I do not know; and all this does not seem to me so very discouraging. After all, why afflict one’s self with what the gods created for pleasure?... Appius, therefore, wished me to cure you, by my wise counsels, of an ill that saddens you needlessly. But, first, do you love her as much as Appius declares? His talk is often extravagant and heedless.... VERUS I desired her, I still desire her, as I have never desired any woman.... SILANUS You speak wisely in not separating, from the outset, desire and love. Besides, I understand. She is certainly the loveliest of all the many women whom I have admired in my life. VERUS What!... You have seen her?... Is she at Jerusalem then? SILANUS She is even nearer to us than Jerusalem, which is fifteen stadia from Bethany.... (_Drawing him a little to the right_). Come to this portico and look over there, at the bottom of the valley.... What do you see?... VERUS I see olive-trees, paths, tombs.... Then I see the pediments of palaces or temples, columns, cypresses.... One might think one’s self in the outskirts of Rome.... But I do not perceive.... SILANUS It was Herod the Great, a sort of raving lunatic, but given to building, who filled this valley with splendid palaces more Roman than those of Rome herself.... But look half-way down the hill, to the left of those three tall cypresses, three or four stadia from here.... Do you espy one of the most beautiful marble villas?... VERUS The villa with the wide white steps leading to a semicircular colonnade adorned with statues?... SILANUS That is where she has retired.... VERUS Mary Magdalene?... In that solitude, so far from the city?... SILANUS She told me that she was fleeing from the fanaticism of the Jews, the tumult and the sickening smells, which increase twofold at Jerusalem as the Passover approaches.... VERUS Then you see her?... You have spoken to her?... SILANUS The good Appius, knowing that the sight of a young and beautiful woman delights my eyes without endangering them, did not dissuade her from coming up to the house of a disarmed and harmless old man.... VERUS