THE GREAT feast of the Jews was approaching, and their intention was to avail themselves of the popular exultation which always manifests itself at the solemnities of the Passover. The city was overflowing with a tumultuous populace clamoring for the death of the Nazarene. My emissaries informed me that the treasure of the Temple had been employed in bribing the people. The danger was pressing. A Roman centurion had been insulted. I had written to the prefect of Syria for a hundred foot soldiers and as many cavalry. He had declined. I saw myself alone with a handful of veterans in the midst of a rebellious city, too weak to suppress a disorder, and having no other choice left but to tolerate it.

They had seized upon Jesus, and the seditious rabble, although they had nothing to fear from the Pretorium, believing with their leaders, that I winked at their sedition, continued vociferating, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Three powerful parties had combined together at that time against Jesus. First, the Herodians and the Sadducees, whose seditious conduct seemed to have proceeded from double motives. They hated the Nazarene, and were impatient of the Roman yoke. They could never forgive me for having entered their holy city with banners that bore the image of the Roman emperor, and, although in this instance I committed a fatal error, yet the sacrilege did not appear less heinous in their eyes. Another grievance also rankled in their bosoms. I had proposed to employ a part of the treasure of the Temple in erecting edifices of public utility. My proposals were scowled at.

The Pharisees were the avowed enemies of Jesus. They cared not for the government. They bore with bitterness the severe reprimands which the Nazarene for three years had been throwing out against them wherever he had gone. Too weak and pusillanimous to act by themselves, they had embraced the quarrels of the Herodians and the Sadducees. Besides, these three parties I had to contend against the reckless and profligate populace, always ready to join a sedition, and to profit by the disorder and confusion that followed from it.

Jesus was dragged before the high priest and condemned. It was there that the high Priest Caiaphas performed a derisory act of submission. He sent the prisoner to me to pronounce