“There’s something in this, Sinclair, which I don’t like. Read through the story, consider it, there’s something there which sounds insipid. I mean this business of the two thieves. It’s sublime, the three crosses standing side by side on the hill! But what about this sentimental story of the honest thief, which reads more like a tract? First he was a criminal who had perpetrated crimes, and God knows what, and now he breaks out in tears and is consumed by feelings of contrition and repentance. I ask you what’s the sense of such a repentance two steps from the grave? It’s nothing but a real parson’s story, mawkish and mendacious, larded with emotion, and having a most edifying background. If today you had to choose one of the two thieves as your friend, or if you consider which of the two you would the sooner have trusted, it would most certainly not be this weeping convert. No, it’s the other, who’s a real fellow with plenty of character. He doesn’t care a straw about conversion, which in his case can mean simply nothing more than pretty speeches. He goes his way bravely to the end, without being such a coward as to renounce the devil in the last moment who up to that point has had to help him. He is a character, and in Biblical history people of character always come off second best. Perhaps he’s a descendant of Cain. Don’t you think so?”