"Roads by Seabury Quinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quinn Seabury)

parapet, "it comes sooner than we thought, my Claudius!
Caiaphas has taken custody of this self-styled King of Jewry,
tried him on a charge of blasphemy and treason before the
Sanhedrin and judged him worthy to be crucified. Now he
brings the case to me on high petition. What are we to do?"
"Why, kick the fat pig squealing back to his sty,
Excellence. None but Rome has jurisdiction in such cases.
Caiaphas can no more condemn a man to death than he can
don the toga of Imperial authority -"


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"Aye, thou hast said it. But therein lies our difficulty, and
our danger. I alone, as Procurator, can mete out sentence of
death, but if these priests and their paid underlings should
rouse the louse-bit rabble to rebellion we have not troops
enough to put it down. Furthermore, should insurrection
come, Rome is like to have my life. True, I am sent out here to
govern and to rule, but chiefly to collect the tax. A people in
rebellion pays no tribute to the throne. Come, Claudius, my
toga. Let us hear what harm this uncrowned king hath done
the state."
A murmur like a storm wind in the treetops filled the hall
of audience. In the brilliant light of flambeaux double files of
praetorian guardsmen stood at stiff attention as the Procurator
took his seat upon the ivory and purple chair of state. Well
forward in the hall, before the dais, stood Caiaphas with
Simeon and Annas to his right and left. A knot of temple
guards - tawdry imitations of the Roman legionaries -
grouped about their prisoner, a tall young man in white,
bearded in the Jewish fashion, but so light of skin and fair of
hair he seemed to bear no racial kinship to the swarthy men
surrounding him.
"Hail, Procurator!" Meticulously Caiaphas raised his
right hand in the Roman fashion, then bowed with almost
fawning oriental obsequiousness. "We come to you for
confirmation of the sentence we have passed upon this
blasphemer and traitor to the Empire."


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Pilate's salutation was the merest lifting of the hand.
"The blasphemy is your affair, priest," he answered shortly.
"What treason hath he wrought?"