It was cold. The servants and attendants had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and were huddled around it, some sitting, some standing, warming themselves. Peter was seated in their midst warming himself, waiting for the outcome of the case.
The maidservant of the High Priest, who was the portress, came in. Having noticed the Apostle who was warming himself, she came up to him and scrutinized him.
“Here is one who was with the Nazarene,” she said.
Then, looking him straight in the face, she said, “Yes, you were with Jesus of Galilee!”
Peter denied it before them all, saying, “Woman, I do not know Him! I do not know… I cannot understand what you are saying!”
Then he left the courtyard and went to the vestibule; but as he arrived there, another maid noticed him and cried out to the attendants, “This man certainly was with Jesus of Nazareth!”
A moment later a servant encountered him and said, “You, too, are one of them!”
At that moment the cock crowed.
Peter returned to the fire, standing and warming himself again.
“Were you not one of His Disciples?” the attendants asked him.
And a second time, he denied it with an oath: “No, I tell you, no! I do not know the man at all!”
About an hour later the bystanders said to him, “Surely you are one of that group, for you are from Galilee: your speech betrays you!”
One of the attendants of the High Priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, also accused him, saying, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?”
Again Peter denied it, and he began to curse with repeated oaths and protestations, “No,” he said again, “I do not know that man! I do not know what you mean!”
And the cock crowed a second time.
Jesus passed by at that very moment, and turning around, He looked upon Peter.
Then Peter remembered the words that the Lord had said to him, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny Me three times.”
He left, and once outside, he wept bitterly.