"What wilt thou?" asked the porter, partly opening the door and looking forth.
"Tell thou to those who are within," was responded, "that the Romans and the chief priests have taken the prophet of Galilee by force. He is now at the palace of the procurator and a great multitude gathereth. I am a kinsman of Isaac, the aged."
Several were within hearing and the message passed quickly throughout the house. There was then hurried girding of robes and putting on of sandals.
"We will go forth," said Ben Ezra. "I would see what this thing meaneth. He hath done nothing for which he might be taken, either under the law of the Jews or the law of the Romans."
Some said one thing and some another, and so it was over the entire city, for great was the tumult which was arising in Jerusalem. It was said that Jesus had been arrested in the night upon the Mount of Olives, beyond the brook Kidron, after he had eaten the Passover in the city with his disciples. Neither he nor they had fought save for a blow or two, and no man had been slain. Jesus had been taken before the high priest and before Herod, the tetrarch, and before the procurator, by whom he was now to be judged, the others not having due authority. The tetrarch was in the city at this season by reason of the Passover, although it was known that he was at enmity with Pontius the Spearman.
There were many rumors, nor was it easy to determine what report to believe, but when Ben Ezra and Isaac and their company came to the palace of the procurator they saw a strange matter. Outside of the palace was a place which was called the Pavement, and to this, and not into the house, the strictest Jews might advance and not become unclean, to be afterward unfitted for the Passover worship in the temple. Out of this place had been brought a throne chair of the procurator, and in it he now was seated for judgment, surrounded by armed legionaries and men of high degree, as if some matter of importance called for his decision.
Before him, as one who is accused of some crime and is awaiting decision, stood Jesus of Nazareth, but not as any had ever before seen him. He had been both stripped and scourged, and the soldiers of the procurator, besides beating and mocking him, had derisively arrayed him in a purple robe of royalty; but the crown which they had put upon his head was a torture crown, plaited of thorn-tree twigs.
The procurator himself now spoke, not to the prisoner before him, but to the surging mob of Jews upon the Pavement and in the street.
"Behold the man!" he said.
Then arose an angry roar of many voices, among which the loudest words were: