"What! John the Baptist? John the Baptist, yea, and more than a prophet--John the Angel of God! Is this he whom you have slain?" "What had he to say to my marriage?" answered Herod, through whose purple face a livid under-color was penetrating to the surface. "Why," exclaimed Paulus, "the holy books of your own nation forbade such a marriage, and John could not hear of it without rebuking you. I, although a Gentile, honor those books. Out upon you, impious assassin! I ask not, where was your mercy, or where your justice; but where has been your sense of common decency, this evening? I shall never cease to lament that I once stood under your roof. My presence was meant as an honor to you; but it has proved a disgrace to myself." Taking his scarlet cloak, he flung it over his shoulders, and left the hall amid profound silence--a silence which continued after he had quitted the courtyard, and begun to descend from Mount Zion to the labyrinth of streets branching downward to the Tyropæon Valley. In one of these, under a bright moonlight, he met again that same beautiful youth whom he had seen in the morning when he was descending the Mount of Olives. "Stay!" cried Paulus, suddenly stopping in his own rapid walk. "Said you not, this morning, that he who was called 'John the Baptist' was more than a prophet? Herod has this moment slain him, to please a vile woman. The tyrant has sent the holy prophet out of life." "Nay; into life," replied the other John; "but, brave and noble Roman--for I see you are both--the Master, who knows all things, and rejoices that John has begun to live, grieves as well." "Why grieves?" inquired Paulus, musing. "Because," replied the other John, "the Master is verily man, no less than _He is Who is_." "What, then, is he?" asked Paulus, with a look of awe. "He is the Christ, whom John the Prophet, now a witness unto death, had announced." Hereupon the two went their several ways, Paulus muttering: "_The second name in the acrostic._" But, really, he had ceased to care for minor coincidences in a huge mass of convergent proofs all gaining possession of his soul, and taking alike his will and his understanding captive--captive to the irresistible truth and the equally irresistible beauty of the message which had come. The immortality of which he was an heir, the reader has seen him long since believing; and long since also rejecting both the pantheism of the philosophers and the polytheism of the vulgar. And here was a great new doctrine authoritatively establishing all that the genius of Dionysius had guessed, and infinitely more; truths awful and mysterious, which offered immediate peace to that stupendous universe that is within a man, while assuring him of power, joy, and honor to begin some day, and nevermore to end.