Volume 2

174
Life of Jesus Christ
necessaries. All this took place before and during the
meal. Martha was in her element.
After the meal Jesus, Lazarus, the other friends, and
the holy women assembled secretly in another of the subterranean
halls. Jesus sat on a raised seat at one side of
the hall, the men standing and sitting around Him; the
women were on the opposite side on steps covered with
carpets and cushions. Jesus spoke of the mercy of God to
His people. He had sent them Prophets one after another
whom they had disowned and ill-treated; now they would
reject the Supreme Grace, and He predicted what would
betide them. After He had dwelt upon this at length, some
of His hearers said to Him: "Lord, relate this to us in a
beautiful parable," and Jesus told them the parable of a
king who after all his servants had been killed by the unfaithful
vinedressers, sent his son into the vineyard where
he too was murdered.
Some of the men withdrew at the close of this instruction
and Jesus went with others into the hall and walked
up and down. Martha, who was passing to and fro, approached
Him and had a long talk about her sister Magdalen.
She related what she had heard of her from
Veronica, and her own consequent anxiety.
While Jesus was walking up and down the hall with the
men, the women sat playing a kind of lottery for the
benefit of their new undertaking. On the elevated platform
was a table on rollers around which they sat. The plane of
the table, which projected into five angles like the rays of
a star, covered a box about two inches in depth. From the
five points to the center of this partitioned box, ran deep
furrows on the surface, and between them were slits connecting
the interior. Each of the women had some long
strings of pearls and nlany other little precious stones.
Each in turn placed some of them in one of the furrows
on the table. Then resting a delicate little bow on the
outer end of the furrow, she shot a tiny arrow at the