To Pilate, governor of Jerusalem, seated upon the ivory chair of office before the palace, came the message of his wife. He glanced down at it with some impatience, when Diomed thrust the tablets into his hand with a hurried word of explanation.
“Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man,” he read, “for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”
The message was signed and sealed with the signet of the Roman princess. Pilate’s pallid and heavy face whitened to the lifeless hues of the wax upon [pg 161]which the fateful words were written. Before him stood the drooping but still majestic figure of the Nazarene, robed in the purple robe of his torture and wearing the crown of thorns, a piteous sight, before which angels were vailing their shamed faces. Beyond the strong cordon of the Roman guard surged the wildest, cruelest mob of all the ages.
The governor rose to his feet slowly, and, advancing to the side of the prisoner, exclaimed in his loud, passionless voice, “Behold the man!”
Mocking laughter, furious incoherent shouts, coupled with the dreadful, insistent, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” burst out in wilder clamor.
Pilate looked forth over the sea of terrible upturned eyes, and his huge limbs trembled beneath him. Again he glanced at the pale, melancholy face of [pg 162]the prisoner. “The fellow is naught but a Jewish peasant,” he assured himself. “And after all, what use to cast Roman justice before dogs. They will have none of it.” Loudly he called for water in a basin, and in sight of them all washed his hands with spectacular solemnity, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it!”
Back came the mocking, inhuman cry, “His blood be upon us and upon our children!”
Pilate ground his teeth in impotent rage, and, seizing Jesus roughly by the shoulder, he thrust him forward in the face of the mob. “Shall I crucify your King?” he shouted derisively.
“We have no king but Cæsar!” was the blasphemous answer. And with that word was the scroll rolled up and sealed [pg 163]with the seven seals of wrath against the day of wrath.
And they took Jesus and led him away.