“Thus shall it be with thy head,” they cried. From that hour Ananias had the air of a man haunted with the certainty of coming down. With melancholy countenance, he wandered aimlessly through the splendid halls of the Prætorium, trembling at the din of battle outside its walls, and expecting at every moment to witness the fearful inrush of fierce-eyed, saber-brandishing Zealots, all athirst for his blood. His cowardice moved even his Jewish friends to contempt. “Ananias, thy face is like a whited wall,” laughed one. A whited wall! Those words troubled him for the rest of the day, reviving, as they did, a saying that had long since passed from his memory. “_God shall smite thee, thou whited wall_: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law?”[15] Whence, and from whom, came these words? Evidently from some prisoner before his judgment-seat, whom he had ordered to be struck. Yes; he remembered now; it was the indignant utterance of Paul of Tarsus--that Paul whose life he had sought to take by the daggers of the Zealots. And now, by the irony of a divine Nemesis, the daggers of these same Zealots were seeking to take _his_ life! Were there no secret chambers, he wailed, where one could hide? He had heard that Herod, in building this palace, had constructed such. Would no one point them out? But all were too busy with the siege to attend to his plaint. That siege was conducted with cool skill on the part of the Romans, and with undisciplined fury on that of the Jews, who with that fanatical frenzy peculiar to Orientals, did not hesitate to fling their naked bodies upon the Roman pikes in the vain attempt to force a way into the Prætorium. Every device known to the warfare of that age was tried by the Jews--escalade and fiery arrows, battering-ram and secret mining--tried and made of none effect by the vigilance and ingenuity of Crispus. He, far more than Metilius, was the life and soul of the garrison, even as Simon proved himself more resourceful and valiant than his captain Manahem, who chose for the most part to sit still in a safe place, paying out five golden pieces for every Roman head brought to him.