Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/24

 gest it?" Pilate gasped as he answered by asking contemptuously if he were a Jew. Then Jesus told him quite plainly that while he was a king, his kingdom was not of this world; that for this reason he had no military ambition and no civil interests. It was plain enough to Pilate that he was a bright, keen man, though a dreamer, with no concern except in some sort of visionary, religious teaching. For this reason, and because Pilate is always glad enough to put a crimp in the power of the priests, I saw he was determined to save the man alive. Immediately, he went out and told the Jews that he found their charges unsubstantiated. With that, they broke a new bottle of perfume on his head, charging that he had stirred up a riot in Galilee. Pilate side-stepped as quick as that wrestler we bet our sestercii on in the bout that night in Ostia when last we met. He has had a quarrel with Herod for a long time and here was a chance to get rid of a disagreeable duty and placate Herod at the same time, for Herod happened to be in Jerusalem at the birthday celebration of his brother, Agrippa, whom he loves as a weasel loves a fowl, so off he went, attended by the rabble, to Herod, You know what the Herods are like. This Antipas has more of the vices and fewer of the virtues of that Idumean brood than any other I have known. With smug assurance, Herod prepared himself to have sport with his Galilean subject, but Jesus stood before him in a silence that was dignified but for all that, contemptuous and full of merited rebuke. Herod tried in vain to get a word out of him and then had to have recourse to the cheap and vulgar use of his own brutal power, for here I could not protect but must needs obey. Under