“Yes, my beloved,” he said, and his voice sank to deeper solemnity, "I can remember every detail as if it were yesterday. But I knew not what I was doing. My heart was holden, and my soul was darkened. It was not till long, long after, that the grace of God enlightened me.... It was at the time when the Jews keep their Passover. Our division had been sent to guard the state-prison, but I and a few of my comrades had been warned to keep ourselves ready to march at any moment, and within an hour the word was given to set out. We joined a noisy procession, headed by the Roman eagles, which flowed on up the hill where criminals are executed, outside Jerusalem. We could scarcely see or hear what was taking place, the people shrieked and howled so incessantly, evidently inflamed to the highest pitch by their priests and the scribes. However, we were ordered to let them have their way. At last, when I asked a woman what all the tumult was about, she replied: 'They are going to crucify Jesus, the King of the Jews.'" He ceased and bowed his head, as one self-convicted, and a death-like silence reigned in the room. “Ah, my brethren!” he went on presently, in a tone of deep sorrow. “Would that some angel of God had been near in that awful hour to open my heart! In the ear of a heathen soldier, that name sounded like any other. Darkened and in ignorance, I kept guard on the spot where my Saviour was to die.” Again he bowed his penitent head. But soon looking up again with renewed and joyful eagerness, he told them he had been mercifully permitted to see from afar the sublime face of the man, whom he had learned, years after, to recognize as the Redeemer of mankind. The pale features which had looked down on him, as in a vision, had been indelibly graven on his soul, and later, when the tidings of salvation had come home to him, the image had risen to new life, and shone radiantly upon him, like a star of promise, through the darkness of his sufferings and sorrows. When Calenus ceased speaking, no one for some time ventured to break the silence. Glauce, who was shedding quiet tears and recalling her dear Eurymachus, mixing up in her fancy the vision of the Nazarene with the picture of her lover, looked up at the speaker like a worshipper at his divinity. To the rest, indeed, the hoary old man, on whom a ray from that Sun had once fallen, appeared as a superior being, and presently, when the spell of silence was broken, they all crowded round him to kiss his hands with fervent devotion, or even the hem of his garment. The wonderful tale had made an almost weird impression upon Quintus. His fancy was haunted by the face of the pale sufferer, who, at that first meeting in Domitian’s park, had stirred him to such new and unwonted feelings. A shudder, such as he had never felt before, shook him from head to foot, and his whole nature seemed to float away into the rarer air of incomprehensible mysticism.