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In the great hall of his palace by the Tiber, Caesar Augustus, master bookkeeper of the world, was casting up the accounts of the nations of the earth. Before him, stretched on a frame was a chart labeled laconically ORBS TERRARUM-IMPERIUM ROMANUM: The Circle of the Earth-The Roman Empire.

In the center of the chart, in unrelieved white, were Italy and those parts that had been granted the rights of Roman citizenry. Augustus did not concern himself with these. They paid no direct tax and were not subject to compulsory levies of troops. His business was with those blue and red and yellow and grey parts of the map of the world in which were marked the tributary, the auxiliary, the vassal, the enslaved nations.

The ravages of the civil wars by which Augustus had risen to the imperial throne had exhausted and demoralized tht.6nances of the Empire. Whole nations had escaped the tax for years by giving aid to one or other of the factions that had rent the world. System had disappeared. That magnificent, inflexible order on which the safety of Rome rested had fallen to pieces. The methodical, thrifty soul of Augustus revolted at the wasted opportunities, the unworked riches of which the Empire was being cheated and of which it now stood in so great need.

He had set his clerks to work upon the lists of the last census of the world, requiring minute reports from each upon the particular province that was assigned to him showing the estimated changes which must have taken place in the wealth and resources of that region in the time that had elapsed.

Now with his own hand, as his eye traveled over the circle of the tributary earth upon the chart, he was writing out the lists of returns in money and men which each province must deliver to the Empire. A careful and a thrifty man was Augustus, Caesar of the Earth. Nothing should escape. Not the stone cairn by the Rhine nor the onion patch in the Nile mud should go unvisited. A man of calculated magnificences this, with a soul that could measure down to the detail of a village clerk.

The Empire was at peace. He hated war with all the hate of his prudent soul for waste and destruction of wealth and unreturning outlay. He was determined that this peace should be lasting. He would bring such order and system out of the chaos he had found that war would be no more possible. He would bring such wealth and commercial security to the people that all men, in their prosperity, should abhor the name of war.

From the Western Ocean to the Persian plains, from the frozen north to the edge of the southern desert the list should go out from his hand, to governor and satrap and tetrarch and king.

The head tax, the land tax, the measure of the waving crop, the salt that came out of the earth, the fishes that came out of the sea, all must be returned upon his books.

Every ruler, whatever his title, would be held responsible for the full return of the tax. The tenure of his authority would depend upon the fidelity with which he filled out the figures that stood on the books of the clerk of the Tiber.

East, west, north, south the lists went out from Rome and were laid before the eyes of perspiring kings and governors and rulers of every description. It made no difference that this king had already by extravagance or the waste of war reduced his people to the edge of ruin. It was nothing to Rome that one of her governors, to satisfy his own greed or to enrich his favorites, had many times farmed the taxes down to the very roots that stood in the soil. The tribute to Caesar was another matter. It must be found.

The lists came to Herod where he sat in Jerusalem in his old cruel years, looking back over a reign that in it had little but rapacity, patricide and greed. None knew so well as he how little the country could afford to raise the heavy new tax. He knew that he had taken away the upper from the nether millstone. He had taken the seedlings and the growth from the ground. He had muzzled the ox that treaded out the corn. But this had no concern for him. This Herod was not a king of his people. His sycophantic loyalty to Augustus had kept for him the name of king, beyond this he was nothing. Nevertheless, because he was called king, the prudent Augustus, would leave to him the manner of the taking of the numbers of the people and would assure him against disturbance and revolt among them. And the tax must be found.

Through all the land the proclamation went forth that every man was to repair to the city of his fathers, there to enroll himself among his tribe. There was no word of taxes. It was enough for the present that Herod’s men should have the complete roster of all the men of the nation. Later, when every name had been accounted for, so that none might by any chance escape, the tax-gatherers would go forth.

But all men knew what the census meant. And from Bersheba in the far south at the desert line to Dan in the north there was murmuring of the people at this new oppression that was in store.

Once David in his pride had attempted the numbering of the people, and calamity had come upon the nation. Since then no king had dared to command a counting of heads except in the time-honored way of the temple-by counting the Iambs of the Passover sacrifice. So it had been done all the days. It was impiety and sacrilege and invasion of the temple rights to command any other count of the people. Disaster and ruin would surely follow.

Men said that this meant the end of Herod’s rule.

There would be no king in Israel more. Others proclaimed that Rome herself must fall as a consequence of the outrage.

To Nazareth the order came and was posted, with blowing of trumpets, in the public place. Through the upland country of Galilee it went, rousing fierce resentment and stiffening the back of rebellion that was to break out in terrible fury in the days to come. These were anxious times, when young men talked rashly and old men trembled in their helpless rage and all good men prayed that God would withhold his scourge from the backs of the people.

Men came to Joseph talking wild and unrestrained talk to him as he toiled. He was a just man, they said: a servant knowing the Law Was it well that men should submit to this impiety, for which even the great David had been punished; and go up that their heads might be counted for the stranger and the oppressor like unto the beasts of the field?

Was he not a son of that David? Would he thus bring shame upon the blood of his ancestors by putting his head meekly into the stanchion of the defiler of the word of the Lord? Would he not rather proclaim his lineage and his house here, where he stood, and rise to strike a blow for the afflicted in Israel? What shame that he should go cravenly into the city of his father, David, there to announce publicly, to the joy of the unholy, that here was a son of the kings of Judah who bowed a willing knee to the despoiler of his country!

Would he not flee into the mountain fastnesses with them, there to await the coming of the Lord and the hour of His deliverance, that they might then strike with Him, for Him and Israel?

But Joseph had gained wisdom in the ways of the Lord.

He knew that the Savior, the Holy One of Israel was coming. But He was not coming with the sword of the flesh for the bodies of men. He was coming with the sword of the spirit that should strike away the fetters from the souls of men. And He would come in His own appointed way, neither needing nor desiring the shedding of blood to prepare His path.

So Joseph saw that the way of submission was the way of God. He would go, as was the command, to his own city; there to place his name among those of his people.

But, Mary?

The long hand of the clerk of the Tiber had reached out to touch a string of life that was greater than all the strings of power that were held in his hands. Caesar Augustus did not know that he was determining the birthplace of the One who was to rule Rome forever. He was not, in truth, determining that fact; for long ago God had looked upon little Bethlehem of Judah, and the prophet had foretold its glory. Caesar Augustus, in his clerkly order, was but arranging the way for the working of God’s will.

Then Joseph, looking upon Mary, knew suddenly that he could not leave her even for the short time that his journey to Bethlehem might require. He must go, and Mary must go with him. The end of the journey must be with God.

It was a thing to see. The late sun was ahead, across the hill behind Jerusalem. The city was a white jewel pronged by the great stone wall around it. Joseph pulled the ass to the side of the road because the pilgrims behind him were shouting. Without turning from the scene, he moved back along the flank of the ass until he touched Mary’s hand. “Jerusalem,” he said again. He said it as though it were an earthly anteroom to paradise, as indeed it was.

The sun would be gone in ten minutes and there was much to see because he could not stay in Jerusalem. His destination, Bethlehem, was still five miles to the south, but he did not mind the night walk if he could stop a moment and drink in all of this and remember it when he was old.

His eyes, and Mary’s too, moved in little darting glances, and they longed to exclaim to each other but there were no words. This was where God lived. They had been told many times that he did not live in the little synagogues around the country of Judea and far out in the diaspora. The synagogues were there to remind the Jews of God, to remind them of their duty never to live more than ninety days travel from the Great Temple of Jerusalem, never to fail, whenever possible, to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. Each year at the time of the first seder, 300,000 Jews stayed in the city and in the hilly fields around it.

Below was the Valley of Kidron, with the full little river running cold below the east wall of the temple. Gray-blue smoke hung still in the sky over the temple proper. This was the last sacrifices of the day, the last baby lambs on the altar. Inside, there were seven thousand Levitical priests to ascertain that each lamb, before sacrifice, was without blemish, and in the courtyards to the north were animals and birds to be bought for sacrifice.

The Porch of Solomon faced them, the marble walk and corinthian columns gleaming like teeth in a seven-foot mouth. Up the side of the great temple was the snowy stone wall, hung with a cluster of solid gold grapes four stories high. In the valley, the Golden Gate and the Fountain Gate slowly regurgitated the last of the temple pilgrims for the day. From the height, Joseph could look across the enclosed city and see Herod’s palace on the far side, a little south of the place called Galgotha.

Softly, haltingly, Joseph found his voice and, as he drank in the exquisite and almost fearful beauty, he began to tell the story to his wife. She knew the story as well as he, but she listened dutifully, interjecting a word here and there, or a question. He reminded her that he came of the family of David, even though his branch was small and poor. It was David’s son Solomon who had built this. He had commissioned Hiram, the King of Tyre, to draw the plans and do the engineering. The work was finished in seven years, a miracle of goodness. The temple was on Oman’s Rock. It was I,600 feet long and 970 feet wide. The bigger the temple got, the more remote Solomon felt from God, and he needed the solace of women, so on the Mount of Offense to the left he had built a palace and placed therein five hundred concubines.

The sin needed washing and, long after Solomon repented, the Jews split into two nations-Judea and Israel -and the Babylonians defeated them and reduced the walls of the temple. Now the Jews were the chattels of Roman emperors and the Caesars appointed Herod as king to rule the people.

The Herod who sat in that palace on the far side of the city proclaimed himself a Jew and made daily sacrifices, but he was not even a good hypocrite. Joseph had heard the elders talk about it in Nazareth, and they averted their eyes when they recited his crimes. Herod bent his knee to Rome. He married Mariamne and, after she bore him two sons, he became piqued and had the three slain. He married ten times and he was so cruel that Caesar Augustus in Rome said that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son. This was a sacrilegious joke on the dietary laws, and Joseph did not like to repeat it.

Still-how could one say it?-he had also done good things for God. He had paid ten thousand workmen to repair the temple and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He made temple spires of marble and they glinted pink in the morning sun. He built a great outer portico around the temple and this was called the Court of the Gentiles. Nonbelievers could walk this far. The next inner walk was called the Court of the Women, then came the Court of the Israelite Men. Signs proclaimed that any nonbeliever who walked this far in the temple was liable to death.

Then came the smaller Court of Priests, and inside of it the temple itself. This consisted of two huge chambers. The outer was the Holy; the inner was the Holy of Holies. In front of the Holy was a heavy veil embroidered in rich color, with all the known flowers of the earth, and a variety of the fruits of the earth.

“Darkness is upon us,” said Mary. She had a feeling of foreboding. She wanted to proceed to Bethlehem for no reason other than that she was trembling and the baby was unusually quiet. Joseph stopped in mid-speech. He knew that she would not interrupt him unless there was a reason. He asked if she desired to get down and have privacy. She said no and, without further conversation, he led the ass westward into the valley and across the little wooden bridge over the Kidron and beneath the great wall of the city and then by the Valley of Hinnon and on up into the hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

It was soon night and moonless. Joseph trod slowly, stumbling on stones underfoot, and wondering how much of a man he would be if brigands sprang out of the dark. There was little traffic on the road; a few transients who lived near Jerusalem hurried by, trying to reach home without spending an extra night under the stars.

Something happened suddenly to Mary and she knew in a moment that this would be the night of the baby. She asked Joseph to stop and he became alarmed and asked if she was unquiet. “No,” she said. “I feel no pain, but we must find an inn. The baby-with God’s help-will be born tonight.”

Joseph was frightened. He knew nothing of these things.

The thinking Mary did about the events leading to this night was a kaleidoscope of happy and mysterious and supernatural things calculated to unnerve the most serene young lady. To have a first baby is, in itself, a towering, wordless joy, a living proof of the most common miracle, a sad tenderness to constrict the heart and mist the eyes. To give birth to a first-born who is God and the Son of God and the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is, at age fifteen or any greater age, a heavier responsibility than any other person ever bore, an enormity of weight which could be maintained only by one too young to appreciate it.

This was the winter solstice of the Jewish year 3790.

The gaiety of the Feast of Chanukah had ended as Joseph and his wife left Nazareth. They had come down through Nairn and on down into the valley of the Jordan. It was hot along the valley floor, but the Jews of the upland country seldom risked travel by the direct route through Samaria and Sichar, where the people at the village wells were unfriendly and argumentative.

Each night, when the sun was gone and the road obscure, Joseph led the ass a little way off from the river, away from the road and into a clearing where there was very little brush and few insects. Then he tied the ass, tilted the goatskin and filled the earthen jar with water from it, and sat. There was not much to talk about. Their minds were troubled with momentous events far beyond the scope of their thought; far beyond the rationalization of two simple peasants of the family of David. On the few occasions when they discussed it, both Mary and Joseph became overwhelmed and shy. They lapsed into silences and Joseph would mend the conversational rip with a question about Mary’s family.

Mary was big with the baby, and awkward, but she managed to fetch the food and the bread from the pouch on the near side of the donkey, and to set it down as neatly and as appetizingly as possible. There was no meat. Even at home, they never had meat more than once a month. Mostly it was lamb, chopped into cubes and roasted and then set on a plate beside charoseth and other herbs and fruits.

They slept in the open, saving what little money they had for the day of the baby. Sometimes, when there was no moon, Joseph set the lamp on the ground and Mary removed her veil and brushed the long dark hair which hung to her waist. She said that she would like to bathe in the Jordan, and she said it wistfully because she knew that Joseph would say no, and a good wife did not dispute the will of her husband. On these occasions he said no. He said it gently, reminding her that her time was near, that this would be her first-born, and he would not assume the risk of the river. To this Mary made no reply. Joseph, touched with tenderness, said gruffly that the best he could do was to take some cloths to the Jordan, wet them and wring them out, and bring them to her. Mary said that she would appreciate it.

In the morning, with the sun still behind the Mountains of Moab, Joseph arose, adjusted his tunic, and fed the animal. He worked quietly, whispering to the jackass, setting the folded blanket behind the withers, adjusting and balancing the goatskin and the food bag, before awakening his wife. He felt an enormous compassion for this girl, but he could never explain it. Not even to himself. He had once felt this way toward a little boy who had a withered foot.

The road was busy at dawn. Sometimes Joseph had to wait until he could find room between parties going south. The road, it seemed, was always alive. The rich Greeks traveled south out of Sepphoris in sedan chairs, the servants shouldering the yokes easily and walking steadily, en route to Jerusalem to trade with the rich Jews. The northbound traffic came from Jerusalem and also from as far away as Egypt, and these merchants were laden with fabrics and metal objects and expensive spices. They left their elegant good wishes on the air behind them.

On the evening of the fourth day they were at Jericho, a few miles above the Salt Sea and within glance of Mt. Nebo to the east. Joseph wanted to stay at an inn, where they could pay for space on the floor, but Mary begged him not to do it. “This is not an important day,” she said. He knew what she meant.

“One does not see a great place like Jericho often,” he said softly, “It will be just as well if we eat at an inn and, as you say, sleep in the fields.” He looked away. “I was thinking of you.”

They ate at an inn on the far side of town, near where the wilderness begins. It was an ordinary place, catering to transients. It was a stone place, and one had to eat whatever the house offered. The food came in gleaming bowls, and Mary admitted to herself that it was better than anything she had to offer so, conversationally, she shifted the attack.

“There are many people in these places,” she said. Joseph shrugged. “A public house,” he said. He was a medium-sized man with deep brown curls hanging to his shoulders. The hair was thick and parted in the middle. His beard was thin and scraggly, but he wiped it with his hand as though it were full. This, Mary understood, was natural in a young man.

She ate leaning against a wall. She said it made her back feel good. He stood flanking her, a wall of protection against the crush of people entering and leaving the place, babbling as though this were the last chance to inflict their opinions on others.

It is better together,” she said shyly.

“When we must eat in the fields,” he said, “we will eat in the fields. This eating is rare.”

Mary ate well, stealing furtive glances at Joseph and wondering what she did to deserve all the tumult of happiness she felt when he was near. It was like a tame storm in her heart, a relaxation of caution accompanied by the excitement of knowing that she belonged to this growing boy. She had never been anywhere, except to visit old relatives, and now, in advanced pregnancy, she was seeing much and knowing much in a few days.

In the morning, Joseph led Mary and the ass into the wilderness. It was twenty miles to Bethany, and, from there, three to the heart of Jerusalem. A man with strong legs could walk it, leading an animal and a woman, before sundown. The wilderness is a barren place in the mountains, where nothing of consequence grows and the tiny peaks look alike, ochre and white and chalky, a place where bandits await the ornate sedan chairs and the sun smites the walker until the sweat itches his legs and softens the straps of his sandals.

Joseph stopped at the top of the rise. The ass stopped, and used a hind leg to kick the flies from the underside of his belly. Mary looked up, a tired child with eyes partly conscious of the scene.

“Jerusalem,” Joseph said, pointing. She looked. The wonderment of what she saw caused the nausea to fade. Her eyes lost the glazed look. She had heard her father describe this place when she was a little girl. A glance told her that the poor man did not know how to make anyone see Jerusalem. Joseph opened his mouth to speak, but what his eyes saw made his mind drunk and paralyzed his tongue.