Who dared commit such manifest sacrilege?... MARY MAGDALENE I do not know.... I have had the slaves in charge of the aviary and the fish-pond beaten with rods and put to the torture: they have confessed nothing and I believe that they know nothing.... VERUS Have you no clue, no suspicion? SILANUS The theft amazes me, for the country is safe.... I have been living here for nigh six years; and no one has ever tried to rob me of an atom of my wisdom, which is never under lock and key and is the only precious thing that I possess.... The Jew is crafty, sly and evil-minded; he practises cheating and usury as well as most of the cringing virtues and vices; but he nearly always avoids frank, straightforward theft, honest theft, if one may say so.... MARY MAGDALENE I at first suspected some Tyrian workmen who are fitting one of the rooms in my villa with those movable panels which are changed at every course, so that the walls may harmonize with the dishes covering the table.... VERUS I have seen some like them in the house of our Governor, Pomponius Flaccus, at Antioch; but I did not know that this fashion, so new to Rome herself, had already made its way into this remote country.... MARY MAGDALENE Nor will you find it, except in my house; and the last palace of the Tetrarch Antipas is still without it.... Therefore I began by suspecting those workmen; but I have proofs that they are innocent. I now feel sure that the thieves must be sought among that band of vagrants and prowlers who have been infesting the country for some time.... SILANUS The famous band of the Nazarene.... MARY MAGDALENE Even so. Their leader, I hear, is a sort of unwashed brigand who entices the crowds with a rude kind of sorcery and, on the pretence of preaching some new law or doctrine, lives by plunder and surrounds himself with fellows capable of everything.... Besides, I have other causes to complain of them.... Two days ago, when I was walking in my gardens, under the portico that divides them from the road, a dozen wretches, belonging to that band, insulted me foully and threatened me with stones.... It is becoming intolerable; and it is time that the countryside were rid of them.... VERUS I have heard about those people.... I know that the authorities have their eyes upon them.... I will have them watched more closely. For that matter, if you wish, it would be easy for me to arrest their leader.... MARY MAGDALENE Do so, I pray you, and as soon as possible.... I should be especially grateful to you.... SILANUS