The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?”
    “Everyone,” the prisoner replied. There are no evil people in the world.”
    The first I hear of it,” Pilate said, grinning. “But perhaps I know too little of life! ... You needn’t record any more,” he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. “You read that in some Greek book?”
    “No, I figured it out for myself.”
    “And you preach it?”
    “Yes.”
    “But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Rat-slayer – is he good?”
    “Yes,” replied the prisoner. True, he’s an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and hard. I’d be curious to know who maimed him.”
    “I can willingly tell you that,” Pilate responded, “for I was a witness to it. The good people fell on him like dogs on a bear. There were German!
    Fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn’t been cut by a cavalry turim, of which I was the commander — you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Ratslayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso,[48] in the Valley of the Virgins.”
    “If I could speak with him,” the prisoner suddenly said musingly, “I’m sure he’d change sharply.”
    “I don’t suppose,” Pilate responded, “that you’d bring much joy to the legate of the legion if you decided to talk with any of his officers or soldiers. Anyhow, it’s also not going to happen, fortunately for everyone, and I will be the first to see to it.”
    At that moment a swallow swiftly flitted into the colonnade, described a circle under the golden ceiling, swooped down, almost brushed the face of a bronze statue in a niche with its pointed wing, and disappeared behind the capital of a column. It may be that it thought of nesting there.
    During its flight, a formula took shape in the now light and lucid head of the procurator. It went like this: the hegemon has looked into the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, alias Ha-Nozri, and found in it no grounds for indictment. In particular, he has found not the slightest connection between the acts of Yeshua and the disorders that have lately taken place in Yershalaim. The vagrant philosopher has proved to be mentally ill. Consequently, the procurator has not confirmed the death sentence on Ha-Nozri passed by the Lesser Sanhedrin. But seeing that Ha-Nozri’s mad Utopian talk might cause disturbances in Yershalaim, the procurator is removing Yeshua from Yershalaim and putting him under confinement in Stratonian Caesarea on the Mediterranean – that is, precisely where the procurator’s residence was.
    It remained to dictate it to the secretary.
    The swallow’s wings whizzed right over the hegemon’s head, the bird darted to the fountain basin and then flew out into freedom. The procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw the dust blaze up in a pillar around him.
    “Is that all about him?” Pilate asked the secretary.
    “Unfortunately not,” the secretary replied unexpectedly and handed Pilate another piece of parchment.
    “What’s this now?” Pilate asked and frowned.
    Having read what had been handed to him, he changed countenance even more: Either the dark blood rose to his neck and face, or something else happened, only his skin lost its yellow tinge, turned brown, and his eyes seemed to sink.
    Again it was probably owing to the blood rising to his temples and throbbing in them, only something happened to the procurator’s vision. Thus, he imagined that the prisoner’s head floated off somewhere, and another appeared in its place.[49] On this bald head sat a scant-pointed golden diadem. On the forehead was a round canker, eating into the skin and smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a pendulous, capricious lower lip. It seemed to Pilate that the