CHAPTER VII.
Let us take our stand by the gate, just out of the edge of the currents--one flowing in, the other out--and use our eyes and ears awhile.
In good time! Here come two men of a most noteworthy class.
"Gods! How cold it is!" says one of them, a powerful figure in armor; on his head a brazen helmet, on his body a shining breastplate and skirts of mail.

"How cold it is! Dost thou remember, my Caius, that vault in the Comitium at home which the flamens say is the entrance to the lower world?
By Pluto! I could stand there this morning, long enough at least to get warm again!" The party addressed drops the hood of his military cloak, leaving bare his head and face, and replies, with an ironic smile, "The helmets of the legions which conquered Mark Antony were full of Gallic snow; but thou--ah, my poor friend!--thou hast just come from Egypt, bringing its summer in thy blood." And with the last word they disappear through the entrance.
Though they had been silent, the armor and the sturdy step would have published them Roman soldiers.
From the throng a Jew comes next, meager of frame, round-shouldered, and wearing a coarse brown robe; over his eyes and face, and down his back, hangs a mat of long, uncombed hair.

He is alone.

Those who meet him laugh, if they do not worse; for he is a Nazarite, one of a despised sect which rejects the books of Moses, devotes itself to abhorred vows, and goes unshorn while the vows endure.
As we watch his retiring figure, suddenly there is a commotion in the crowd, a parting quickly to the right and left, with exclamations sharp and decisive.

Then the cause comes--a man, Hebrew in feature and dress.