Sentence The Fourhundredandsixtyeighth

Little Levy Balquhidder, just five months old, had a spirit that remembered everything since the Beginning of Time and, after reciting the Beatitudes in his head, in the original Hebrew, found himself, later that afternoon, replete with his mother's creamy breast-milk, thinking about the group of Disciples as they stood among the eager crowd, gazing up at their leader, Jesus bar-Joseph,

Carpenter of Nazareth, and he couldn't help experiencing the sin of Pride, just briefly, as he thought of the hours he had spent the previous night working on the Speech; Daniel bar-Malachi, principal speech-writer to the ingenious leader of the small band who were going to shake up the whole World – oh, his mother was proud when she heard about his work, but anxious too, for they were sometimes harried from one place to another, and even when they were not, Jesus still urged them to hurry, as if he sensed that his time was limited; and yet, when he spoke, time seemed to stand still, what might have been a little homily became instead something of great meaning, great worth, great importance – which was why Daniel had engaged a scribe to accompany them and take down whatever The Master said, why! three donkeys now carried all the wax tablets and the second scribe was copying them onto papyrus which could be rolled and carried more easily in a jar, or lighter too in a quiver: which was how, as Master Nicodemus Dumps, he spoke to William Blake in Lambeth and mentioned Jesus as a Bow of burnished gold and his words being the Arrows of Desire, while telling of Jesus' own visit to Britain, not as a boy, which most theologians consider possible, but in fact as a man, after his death on the cross – now that was quite a stunt, what with Simon's trick Cross and the thunder and lightning and the secret ingredient in the soldiers' wine and the spilling of copious amounts of hen's blood; and he remembered, all in a blur, the decision that they couldn't return eastward into Roman territory, so headed west, in the fishing boat belonging to a recent convert, across a wide ocean, and 

then a strange land that seemed to stretch ahead of them for ever until they reached the sea again, and another crossing to another strange land where Jesus met up with a Holy Man calling himself Buddha

and they had travelled and talked and walked and talked and sang polyphonic songs which were very different from those at home, before Jesus eventually said: “I've walked as far as I can, and I ain't going no further,” which was when he settled down with his companion, Mary Magdalene, and Daniel and his companion Judith, and they raised their families and worked their land until they were too old to do anything else but talk and talk and talk, while their children and grandchildren worked the land and listened to their stories; and after Daniel died, he was born as . . . . . but that was when his dad, Rary's voice intruded, saying: “and that was the end of internationalisation, and little i18n found himself tucked up until a better and braver world was ready for him, and that's a story for another day, goodnight, Little Levy, sweet dreams!” and kissed the top of his head and left the room!