My master Barak starved me and treated me very cruelly, and brought mc with him to Palestine, where he changed my name to 'Eugenius' and castrated me. Then with the money that he had earned in Ireland he bribed the Bishops who ruled in the Holy Places to appoint him general overseer of monuments and chief guide to pilgrims. By their leave he greatly enhanced the wonder of the shrines, and grew very rich. It was he who put the two stone water-pots in the marriage-chamber at C. ina of Galilee. They were so constructed that if one poured water in at the mouth they discharged wine in return. For there was a partition to each bottle, just below the neck, and water poured through a funnel into one part of the bottle did not mix with the wine already stored in the other. Barak also supplied the Potter's Field, called Aceldama, with the original iron chain from which the Apostle Judas hanged himself; and, because pilgrims in the Church of Constantine at the mount of Golgotha often inquired after the sponge of hyssop from which Jesus was given sour wine to drink during His Crucifixion, Barak rediscovered this sponge – pilgrims could drink water through it if they fce'd the attendant well. In the synagogue at Nazareth he also deposited the identical horn-book from which the infant Jesus had been set to learn His alphabet, and the bench on which He sat with other children. My master Barak used to tell the pilgrims: 'This bench may be easily moved or lifted by Christians, but no Jew can stir it.' He had a Jew or two always within call to prove the truth of one-half of this assertion; the pilgrims themselves could prove the other half, if they paid for the privilege.
To the Church of the Holy Sepulchre my master Barak had no need to make any pious additions, for the brazen lamp which had once been placed at Jcsus's head was already there, burning day and night; and the stone by which the tomb was closed lay there, too, at the entrance. It was as large as a millstone, and encrusted with gold and precious stones. From iron rods on the walls of the shrine hung armlets, bracelets, chains, necklaces, coronets, waist-bands, sword-belts, crowns bequeadicd by Emperors, of pure gold and Indian jewels, and a great number of rich hcad-omamcnts bequeathed by Empresses. The whole tomb (which recalled the winning-post at the Hippodrome on New Year's Day hung with prizes for the Inaugural Stakes) was plated with solid silver – walls, floor and roof. An altar stood in front of the tomb, under hanging golden lamps in the form of suns.
Barak visited Constantinople one summer (the pilgrim-seasons being spring and autumn) to sell relics to the monks there. He had forged a document purporting to be a testimonial from the Patriarch of Alexandria that a certain couch was the identical one on which Jesus had reclined at the Last Supper. He was asking ten thousand gold pieces for it. It happened that the private secretary to the Patriarch had just arrived in the City; hearing of the matter, he denounced the testimonial as a forgery. But my master Barak, not wishing to be scourged and mutilated as the law required, fled away at once, and took ship, and was not seen again in our Eastern part of the Empire for a great many years. Then a warrant was sworn against him by the landlord from whom he had rented a furnished house. This landlord was a Hippodrome charioteer, the father of the girl Antonina. He was owed a considerable sum of money; and the judge allowed him to distrain upon any goods that Barak had left behind. But Barak had succeeded in carrying away all his possessions except myself; for I had been sent by him on a shopping errand and had lost myself in the City streets. When I came home at last, very late, expecting a severe beating, I found my master Barak gone. Thus it was that I passed into the ownership of the charioteer, who handed me over to his wife to help in the kitchen, who later bequeathed me to her daughter Antonina, whom I served faithfully for more than fifty years.
