But the crowd shouted in front of his windows:  “He is a blasphemer!  A deceiver and a traitor!  An anarchist!  He must be tried!” Pilate did not know what to do.  Then his wife came, and entreated him not to do anything to Jesus of Nazareth.  She had had a horrible dream about Him.  She had seen Him standing in a white garment that shone like the moon.  Then he had descended into a deep abyss where the souls of the condemned were wailing, had raised them up and led them on high.  Then dreadful angels with big black wings had seized the judges, and thrown them into the abyss.  Pilate had been among them, and his cry of pain still rang in her ears.

“Don’t make my head more confused than it is already with your talking,” he commanded.  The noise in the street became more threatening every moment.

Jesus was exhausted, and, surrounded by guards, sat down on a stone in the courtyard of Pilate’s house.  The crowd came up, mocked Him and insulted Him.  They draped Him in the torn red cloak of a Bedouin for royal purple, they plucked thorns from a hedge in the neighbouring garden, wove them into a crown, and set it on His head.  They broke off a dry reed and put it into His hand as a sceptre.  They anointed His cheek with spittle.  And then they bowed down to the ground before Him, and sang in a shrill voice:  “Hail to Thee, O anointed Messiah-King!” and put out their tongues at Him.

Jesus sat there, calm and unmoved.  He looked at His tormentors with sad eyes, not in anger, but in pity.

His disciples, terrified to death, had now come up, but remained outside the walls.  Peter was furious over the infamous betrayal that had taken place, and could not understand what had possessed Judas.  In sore distress he stood in the farthest courtyard where it was dark.  Then a girl tripped up to him on her way to the well for water.

“Here’s another!” she shouted.  “Why are you standing here?  Go and do homage to your King.”

Peter turned in the direction of the gate.

“You’re one of those Galileans, too,” she continued.

“What have I to do with Galilee?” he said.

A gatekeeper interposed:  “Of course he is a Galilean.  You can see that by his dress.  He belongs to the Nazarene.”

“I do not know Him,” said Peter, and tried to hurry off.  The gatekeeper stopped him with the shaft of his spear.  “Halt there, you Jew!  Your King is seated yonder on His throne.  Do homage to Him before He flies into the clouds.”

“Let me alone; I do not know the man,” exclaimed Peter, and hastened away.  As he went out of the gate, a cock crowed just over his head.  Peter started.  Did He not speak of a cock at supper?  “And another will deny me this night just before cock-crow.”  In a flash the old disciple saw what he had done.  From terror that he, too, would be seized, he had lied about his Master, about Him who had been everything