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

bound wrists for sceptre, and thus regailed they set him on a
table and bowed the knee to him in mock servility, what time
they hailed him as Judea's new King.
Now some of the guards from the temple had come into
the barrack room to watch the scourging, and one of them

[35]



said to another, "This man's disciples claim he has worked
wonders, making blind men see and lame men walk, aye,
even raised corpses from the dead." And hearing this some of
the others stepped behind the prisoner and struck him on his
raw scourge-wounded back, then when he turned mild eyes
on them demanded, "If thou art truly given power from God
to know all things, say which of us it was that smote thee."
But the decurion had wearied of the cruel sport, so they
brought him back and set him on the pavement between
Pilate and the priests. "Behold the man!" the Procurator bade.
"Behold your King, O men of Judea!"
"We have no king but Caesar!" Caiaphas cried self-
righteously. "This one hath declared himself a king, and
whoso calls himself a king speaketh against Caesar!"
Meanwhile Claudius was hastening to the judgment hall
with a miserable object. The man was of great stature, but so
bowed with fetters that he could not stand erect. His clothing
was in tatters, no second glance was needed to know he was a
walking vermin-pasture; the members of the prison guard
shrank from him, fending him away with their lance-butts lest
the lice that swarmed his hair and garments get to them.
Then Pilate bade the prisoner from the dungeons stand
before the priests, and motioned to the bound and thorn-
crowned captive.
"It is your custom, men of Judea, that at the Passover I
release to ye a prisoner," said the Procurator. "Whom will ye,
therefore, that I set at liberty, this convicted robber, doomed

[36]



to die upon the gallows tree, or this one ye have called your
king?"
"We have no king but Caesar!" shouted Caiaphas in
rage. "Away with this one! Crucify him!"
"What, crucify your king?" the Procurator asked in mock
astonishment.
The mob of temple hangers-on that had been carefully
rehearsed by Caiaphas and his underlings - the money-