"Wake up, old man," cried one of them. "See, here is flesh," and he thrust a lump of some filthy carrion to his lips. "Smell it, taste it," he went on, "ah! is it not good? Well, tell us where is that store of food which made you so fat who now are so thin, and you shall have it all, yes, all, all."
Theophilus shook his head.
"Bethink you," cried the man, "if you do not eat, by sunrise to-morrow you will be dead. Speak then and eat, obstinate dog, it is your last chance."
"I eat not and I tell not," answered the aged martyr in a voice like a hollow groan. "By to-morrow's sunrise I shall be dead, and soon you and all this people will be dead, and God will have judged each of us according to his works. Repent you, for the hour is at hand."
Then they cursed him and smote him because of his words of ill-omen, and so went away, taking no notice of Miriam in the corner. When they had gone she came forward and looked. His jaw had fallen. Theophilus the Essene was at peace.
Another hour went by. Once more the door was opened and there appeared that captain who had ordered her to be killed. With him were two Jews.
"Come, woman," he said, "to take your trial."
"Who is to try me?" Miriam asked.
"The Sanhedrim, or as much as is left of it," he answered. "Stir now, we have no time for talking."
So Miriam rose and accompanied them across the corner of the vast court, in the centre of which the Temple rose in all its glittering majesty. As she walked she noticed that the pavement was dotted with corpses, and that from the cloisters without went up flames and smoke. They seemed to be fighting there, for the air was full of the sound of shouting, above which echoed the dull, continuous thud of battering rams striking against the massive walls.
They took her into a great chamber supported by pillars of white marble, where many starving folk, some of them women who carried or led hollow-cheeked children, sat silent on the floor, or wandered to and fro, their eyes fixed upon the ground as though in aimless search for they knew not what. On a daïs at the end of the chamber twelve or fourteen men sat in carved chairs; other chairs stretched to the right and left of them, but these were empty. The men were clad in magnificent robes, which seemed to hang ill upon their gaunt forms, and, like those of the people in the hall, their eyes looked scared and their faces were white and shrunken. These were all who were left of the Sanhedrim of the Jews.