"I wasn't a man to fall into the honey traps set by Jewesses," he said, "and since you lead me to say it, Lamia, I never approved of your lack of self-restraint. If I didn't emphasize enough to you in days gone by that I held you to be very much at fault for having seduced, back in Rome, the wife of a consul, I think it was because you were then paying dearly for that crime. Marriage is a sacred institution for patricians, one that Rome counts on. As for slaves or foreign women, the relations you could strike up with them would count for little were it not that your body gets used to in them a shameful softness. You sacrificed too freely to the goddess of crossroads, I must say, and what I find most to blame in you, Lamia, is that you did not marry legitimately and give children to Rome as every good citizen should do."
But the man exiled by Tiberius was no longer listening to the old magistrate. Having emptied his cup of its vinum Falernum, he was smiling at some invisible picture.
After a moment of silence, he continued in a very low voice that gradually grew louder:
"They dance so languorously, the women of Syria. I knew then in Jerusalem a Jewess who, in a hovel, by the light of a small smoky lamp, on a bad carpet, danced raising her arms to clash her cymbals. Her back arched, her head thrown back and as if dragged down by her heavy auburn hair, her eyes drowned in voluptuousness, ardent and languishing, supple, she'd have made Cleopatra herself pale with envy. I loved her barbaric dances, her slightly husky and yet so sweet singing, the smell of her incense, the semi-sleeping state she seemed to live in. I followed her everywhere. I mixed in with the vile crowd of soldiers, boatmen and publicans she was surrounded with. One day she disappeared and I never saw her again. I looked for a long time for her in doubtful alleyways and taverns. She was harder for me to do without than Greek wine. A few months after I had lost track of her, I learned, quite by chance, that she had joined a small group of men and women who were followers of a young Galilean miracle worker. He was called Jesus, came from Nazareth, and was crucified, for what crime I don't know. Do you remember that man, Pontius?"
Pontius Pilate frowned, bringing his hand to his forehead like someone who is trying to remember. Then, after a few moments of silence, he murmured:
"Jesus. Jesus. From Nazareth? No. I can't bring him to mind."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Procurator of Judea, by Anatole France