Shimei was entered on a mingled vein Of true and false reflection of his thought, Wherein himself could scarce the line have drawn To part the fabrication from the fact. Partly, he thought indeed that Paul was such As he was now describing him to be, In image and projection of himself; Partly, he painted an ideal mere, Conscious creation of malicious mind. He did uneasily believe, or fear, That Paul would somehow cheat the malice yet Of those who hated him; perhaps contrive Escape by night from prison. His restless mind, Hotbed of machination, equally Was hotbed of suspicion and surmise. His mere suspicion and surmise became, To his imagination, certainty; Or else he took, himself, for certainty, At length, what he for certainty affirmed, Swearing the false till he believed it true.
He thus the story of his talk prolonged: "'Now hark thee, friend, and hear me prophesy,' So to the worthy sentinel I said, 'Thou sawest Paul brought in, and he was Paul-- Tell me, was not he Paul, when he came in? Aye, Paul he was, thou sayest. Well, what I say-- And this now, mark it, is my prophecy-- Paul will come out, not Paul, but some one else; In short, will hobble forth--Gamaliel! Gamaliel, thou must know, I said to him, 'Is the old man that lad this morn led in; Making, forsooth, a touching sight to see, So tenderly and gingerly the lad Guided and stayed the steps of that old man. A pretty acted piece of loyalty To venerable age from blooming youth! Watch, thou shalt see it acted over again To-night, with haply some improvement made On the rehearsal, when he leads out Paul. Paul's hair and beard will not need dusting white, Being as white as old Gamaliel's now; But edifying it will be to mark The careful studied totter of the step, The tremble of the hand upon his staff, The thin and querulous quaver of the voice, The helpless meek dependence on his guide, And all the various aged make-believe, Wherewith that subtle master of deceit, That natural, practised, life-long actor, Paul, Will put the guise of old Gamaliel on. 'He-he!' I chuckled to the sentinel, 'To me the spectacle will be as good And laughable, as I should guess a play, A roaring one, of Plautus were to thee!'"
Shimei was venturing to let lapse his part Of mere reporter to a talk supposed Betwixt himself and the dull sentinel-- This to let lapse, or, if not quite let lapse, Mix and confound with his own proper part, Inveterate, unassumed, of scoffer free; He saw the chiliarch sink so deep immersed In hearing and in weighing what was said, He deemed he might thenceforward trust his speech, With scant disguise of indirection, aimed As frankly for a keen intelligence-- The chiliarch's own, and not the sentinel's-- To snare his listener's now less warded wit. Paul was clean gone indeed, gone otherwise Than through the guile that he had dared impute; But he, meantime, would such a chance not miss, A golden chance that might not come again, To prepossess the chiliarch's captive mind With pregnant ill surmise concerning Paul. There yet was unexhausted circumstance Suggestively at hand, seed that but sown Would a fine harvest of suspicion spring.