The sun rose higher in the clear April sky and now it was near to noon. The contest between the flaccid defender and the furious assailants had wasted most of the morning, and there was no time to lose. According to Mosaic law, the bodies of executed criminals could not remain after sunset on the place of punishment, and April days are not as long as June days. Moreover, Caiaphas, reënforced though he was by so many furiously enraged partisans, could not draw a tranquil breath until the Vagabond’s feet were forever halted, fastened with iron nails on the cross. He remembered how, a few days before, Jesus had entered the city surrounded with waving branches and joyful hymns. He was sure of the city itself, but at this period it was full of provincials come from everywhere, who had not the same interests and the same passions as the clientele dependent on the Temple. Those Galileans especially, who had followed Him until now, who loved Him, might make some effort at resistance and put off, even if they did not actually prevent, the real votive offering of that day. Pilate, too, was in haste to have that troublesome, innocent man taken away. He did not wish to think of Him again. He hoped that he would forget after His death that look, those words and, above all, his own corroding uneasiness, so painfully like remorse. Although he had washed and dried his hands, that man in His silence, it seemed to him, was sentencing him to a penalty worse than death itself. Before that scourged man, at the point of death, he felt himself the guilty one. To vent his uneasiness on those who really caused it, he dictated the wording of the titulus or superscription, which the condemned man was to wear about His neck until it was fastened above His head at the top of the cross, as follows: “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.” The Scribe wrote these words three times in three languages in clear, red letters on the white wood. The leaders of the Jews, who had remained there, craning their necks, to hasten the preparations, read this sarcastic inscription and protested. They said to Pilate, “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.” But the Procurator cut them short with a dry brevity: “What I have written I have written.” These are the last words recorded of him, and the most profound! I am forced to make you a present of the life of this man, but I do not deny what I have said. Jesus is a Nazarene, which means also, saint. And He is your King, the wretched King who fits your wretchedness. I wish all men to know how your ill-born race treats saints and kings. It is for this I have written these words in Latin and Greek as well as in Hebrew. And now be off, for I have endured you long enough, “Quod scripsi, scripsi.”