"Hist! Haste!" So Paul to Stephen signed and said; "Hence, and bring hither quickly bread and wine, Wherewith to cheer Gamaliel when he wakes; He sleeps now, weary with unwonted thought."
Shimei saw Stephen from the fort come out And bear purveyance back of bread and wine; So, earlier, he had seen Gamaliel pass, Led by the hand of Stephen, through the gate, Presumably to visit Paul within. For he, as ever when some crime he teemed, Uneasy till the full-accomplished birth, Was like the hungry hunting hound denied Access to his wished prey, known to be near-- Though thus from touch, as too from sight, withdrawn, And only by the teaséd nostril snuffed-- Who cannot cease from patient jealous watch, On haunches sitting, or on belly prone, Lest somehow yet he miss his taste of blood-- So that ill spirit all day had scented Paul, Shut up within the castle out of reach, And sedulously studied, at remove, Whatever might be token of attempt, Other's or his, the morrow's doom to cheat. The very thought, 'Should he slip through our hands!' Was anguish, like a goad, to Shimei, Who now was sure he had the hope divined That Paul was harboring--an escape by night! 'Paul, in the darkness, stealing out disguised As old Gamaliel, would, with meat and drink Supplied him, safety seek in distant flight.' Filled with such thought, the tireless crafty Jew, Colluding with the sentry at the gate, There sat him down the sentry's watch to share; Paul should by no such stratagem avoid The vengeance that next morrow waited him.
But Paul and Stephen, guileless, of the guile Imputed dreamed not; they with happy thought Contented them until Gamaliel woke. Then when Gamaliel woke, they gave him wine, Pure from the grape, so much as heartened him, And bread that strengthened him, from fasting faint. Discourse then followed, eased with many a change From theme to theme, from mood to mood diverse, Until the long daylight was waned away, And twilight deepened round them talking still.
Gamaliel, in whatever various vein Of converse with his outward mind employed, Was ever, in his deeper inward mind, Resistlessly drawn backward to the doubt, The question, the perplexity, the fear, 'Saul--is he right? And is Gamaliel wrong? And have I missed to know the Christ of God?' He gazed abstractedly on Paul, beheld So different; less in outer aspect changed-- Although therein, too, other--than in act, In gesture and in attitude of soul, The spirit and the motive of the man, Transfigured from the pride that once was Saul. "I do not know thee, Saul," at length he said; "Nay, nay, not Saul--I should not call him Saul, This is some different man from him I knew, In other years long gone, and called him Saul! Such difference in the same the sameness makes Impossible. Impossible, but that The sameness still in difference survives Persistently. The impossible itself I must believe--when I behold it."