ontius Pilate, are only a Roman and do not understand.
Were you a Jew, you would realize that there is a greater seriousness at
the bottom of it than mere dissension of the sectaries or trouble-making
for you and Rome. The high priests and Pharisees, every Jew of place or
wealth, Philip, Antipas, myself--we are all fighting for very life.

"This fisherman may be a madman. If so, there is a cunning in his
madness. He preaches the doctrine of the poor. He threatens our law,
and our law is our life, as you have learned ere this. We are jealous of
our law, as you would be jealous of the air denied your body by a
throttling hand on your throat. It is Caiaphas and Hanan and all they
stand for, or it is the fisherman. They must destroy him, else he will
destroy them."

"Is it not strange, so simple a man, a fisherman?" Pilate's wife breathed
forth. "What manner of man can he be to possess such power? I would
that I could see him. I would that with my own eyes I could see so
remarkable a man."

Pilate's brows corrugated at her words, and it was clear that to the
burden on his nerves was added the overwrought state of his wife's
nerves.

"If you would see him, beat up the dens of the town," Miriam laughed
spitefully. "You will find him wine-bibbing or in the company of
nameless women. Never so strange a prophet came up to Jerusalem."

"And what harm in that?" I demanded, driven against my will to take the
part of the fisherman. "Have I not wine-guzzled a-plenty and passed
strange nights in all the provinces? The man is a man, and his ways are
men's ways, else am I a madman, which I here deny."

Miriam shook her head as she spoke.

"He is not mad. Worse, he is dangerous. All Ebionism is dangerous. He
would destroy all things that are fixed. He is a revolutionist. He
would destroy what little is left to us of the Jewish state and Temple."

Here Pilate shook his head.

"He is not political. I have had report of him. He is a visionary.
There is no sedition in him. He affirms the Roman tax even."

"Still you do not understand," Miriam persisted. "It is not what he
plans; it is the effect, if his plans are achieved, that makes him a
revolutionist. I doubt that he foresees the effect. Yet is the man a
plague, and, like any plague, should be stamped out."

"From all that I have heard, he is a good-hearted, simple man with no
evil in him," I stated.

And thereat I told of the healing of the ten lepe