He had therefore decided to save Jesus, but in this indulgence he wanted to put a sarcastic note, something that would be offensive to the High Priests, who three times had set themselves against him and now were importuning him to be their hangman. Up to the last he would pretend to treat Jesus like the King of the Jews. Here is your King, the King that you deserve, wretched and perfidious people! A village carpenter, a vagabond, a beggar, who vapored of reigning beyond earthly life, and who as a matter of fact had as followers only a few fishermen and peasants and a few silly women. See how wretched He is, how miserable! Why do you want to kill Him? Keep Him; you deserve no better King than He. I will follow your example, will amuse myself a little by tormenting Him, and then I will let Him go. And causing Jesus to be led out, Pilate went to the door and said to the High Priests and the others who crowded about, their faces thrust forward to hear the sentence given at last, “Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him and release him.” This was not the answer awaited by the ravening hounds, yelling in the square before the Procurator’s house. A bestial cry burst out from those gaping mouths, “Kill Him!” A flogging would be too light a punishment for this dangerous enemy of the God of Armies and the God of Business. Something quite different from that was necessary to satisfy these butchers of the Temple. They had come to ask for blood and not for pardon. “Kill Him!” yelled Annas and Caiaphas, and with them the Pharisaical vipers hissed, the sellers of the holy animals shrieked, the money-changers, the men who rented beasts of burden, the porters of the caravans. “Kill Him!” howled the Scribes, wrapped in their theological cloaks, the vendors of the Passover fair, the tavern-keepers of the upper city, the Levites, the servants of the Temple, the hired helpers of the usurers, the errand boys of the priests, all the servile horde assembled before the Procurator’s house. As soon as this uproar was a little quieted, Pilate asked, “What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call King of the Jews?” And they all answered, “Crucify him!” But the Procurator resisted, “Why, what evil hath he done?” And they cried out the more exceedingly, “Crucify him!”