The tetrarch rose from the throne. The elders whispered together. Pilate visibly was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he looked upon the incident as a family quarrel, one in which it [pg 213]would be unseemly for him to interfere, and which none the less disturbed the decorum of his court.
Caiaphas edged up to the tetrarch, but the latter brushed him aside.
“The hetaira is right,” he exclaimed. “I am not in power here. If I were, she should be lapidated.”
And, preceded by the butler, Antipas passed through the parting ranks to the vestibule beyond.
The perplexity of the procurator increased. He did not in the least understand. To him Mary stood in the same relation to Antipas that Cleopatra had to Herod. There had been a feud between the tetrarch and himself, one recently mended, and which he had no wish to renew. Yet manifestly Antipas was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by no means clear.
“Bah!” he muttered, in the consoling undertone of thought, “what are their beastly barbarian manners to me?”
These reflections Caiaphas interrupted.
“We are waiting, my lord, for the sentence to be pronounced.”
The tone he used was not, however, indicative of patience, and in conjunction with the incident that had just occurred it irritated and jarred. Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It was for him to speak first. He strangled an oath, and, gathering some fringe of the majesty of Rome, he announced very measuredly:
“You have brought this man before me as a rebel. I have examined him and find no ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch, has also examined him, and by him too he has been acquitted. But in view of the fact that he appears to have contravened some one or another of your laws I order him to be scourged and to be liberated.”