[The Crushed Flower and Other Stories by Leonid Andreyev]@TWC D-Link bookThe Crushed Flower and Other Stories CHAPTER IX 1/16
As an old cheat, coughing, smiling fawningly, bowing incessantly, Judas Iscariot the Traitor appeared before the Sanhedrin.
It was the day after the murder of Jesus, about mid-day.
There they were all, His judges and murderers: the aged Annas with his sons, exact and disgusting likenesses of their father, and his son-in-law Caiaphas, devoured by ambition, and all the other members of the Sanhedrin, whose names have been snatched from the memory of mankind--rich and distinguished Sadducees, proud in their power and knowledge of the Law. In silence they received the Traitor, their haughty faces remaining motionless, as though no one had entered.
And even the very least, and most insignificant among them, to whom the others paid no attention, lifted up his bird-like face and looked as though no one had entered. Judas bowed and bowed and bowed, and they looked on in silence: as though it were not a human being that had entered, but only an unclean insect that had crept in, and which they had not observed.
But Judas Iscariot was not the man to be perturbed: they kept silence, and he kept on bowing, and thought that if it was necessary to go on bowing till evening, he could do so. At length Caiaphas inquired impatiently: "What do you want ?" Judas bowed once more, and said in a loud voice-- "It is I, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed to you Jesus of Nazareth." "Well, what of that? You have received your due.
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