"If you want," said Paulus, "to pass me at once, I must get into the ditch, or throw you into it; which do you prefer?" "I prefer," quoth Caiaphas, "that you should throw me into the ditch, if you either dare or can." "Sir," says Paulus, "I am sorry for the sentiment you express, or at least imply. But I will stand up against your challenge of throwing you into the ditch, because I both could do it, and dare do it, as a Roman soldier, only that there is ONE among you who has come to settle all our disputes, and who has a divine right to do so. For his sake I would rather be thrown into that drain by you--soldier, officer, general, and Roman as I am--than throw you into it." "Let me pass," cried Caiaphas, purple with rage. Paulus, whose behavior at Lake Benacus against the Germans, and previously at Formiæ, and afterward in the terrible Calpurnian House on the Viminal Hill, the reader remembers, made no answer, but, riding back to the Tower of Marianne, allowed the high-priest and his followers there to pass him; which they did with every token of scorn and act of contumely that the brief and sudden circumstances allowed. Caiaphas thus passed on to his country-house at the southwest-by-south of Jerusalem, where he usually spent the night. Paulus then put his pony into a gallop, and soon reached the bridge across the Tyropæon into the courtyard of the Temple, commonly called the courtyard of the Gentiles. Such was the nervous excitement caused by his recent act of purely voluntary, gratuitous, and deliberate self-humiliation, that he laughed aloud as he rode through the Temple yard, coasting the western "cloisters," and so reaching Fort Antonio. There his servant, the Roman legionary, who had before met him at the golden gate, and whose name was Marcus, was awaiting him. CHAPTER XXV. That night the palace of Herod the tetrarch resounded with music, and all the persons of rank or distinction in Jerusalem were among the guests. The entertainment would have been remembered for years on account of its brilliancy; it was destined to be remembered for all ages, even till the day of doom, on account of its catastrophe, chronicled in the books of God, and graven in the horror of men. Paulus, unusually grave, because experiencing unwonted sensations, and anxious calmly to analyze them, was assailed for the first time in his life by a feeling of nervous irritability, which originated (though he knew it not) in his having suppressed the natural desire to chastise the insolence of Caiaphas that morning. He sat abstracted and silent, not far from the semi-royal chair of Herod the tetrarch. His magnificent dress, well-earned military fame, and manly and grave beauty (never seen to greater advantage than at that period of life, though the gloss of youth was past) had drawn toward him during the evening an unusual amount of attention, of which he was unconscious, and to which he would have been indifferent.