Paul, meantime, systematically as it were, avoided seeing the apostles. It is he himself says so, and he takes the trouble to affirm it with an oath; he saw only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord.[11.40] His sojourn lasted only two weeks.[11.41] Assuredly it is possible that at the epoch in which he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians (towards 56), Paul may have found himself led, by the needs of the moment, to give some little coloring to his relations with the apostles; to represent them as more harsh, more imperious, than they were in reality. Towards 56 the essential point for him to prove was that he had received nothing from Jerusalem--that he was in no wise the mandatory of the Council of Twelve established in this city. His attitude at Jerusalem would have been the proud and lofty bearing of a master who avoids relations with other masters in order not to have the air of subordinating himself to them, and not the humble and repentant mien of a sinner ashamed of the past, as the author of the _Acts_ represents. We cannot believe that from the year 44 Paul was animated by this jealous care to preserve his own originality, which he showed at a later day. The rarity of his interviews with the apostles, and the brevity of his sojourn at Jerusalem, arose probably from his embarrassment in the presence of people of quite another nature than his own, and full of prejudices against him, rather than from a refined polity, which would have revealed to him fifteen years in advance the disadvantages there might be in his frequenting their society.