chapter ii

. of the Book of Wisdom, and again by David; the gall and the vinegar offered Him on the Cross and the very words of Jesus giving up the ghost are to be found in the Psalms.

"Nor is this the last of the prophecies to be found in the Old Testament.

"Its prophetic mission is carried out to the end. The establishment of the Church in the place of the Synagogue is foretold by Ezekiel, Isaiah, Joel, and Micah; and the Mass, the Eucharistic Sacrament, is plainly adumbrated by Malachi, who declared that for the offerings of the Old Law offered only in the Temple at Jerusalem shall be substituted 'a pure offering to be offered in every place and by all nations'--by priests chosen from among all people, Isaiah adds, and David says after the order of Melchizedec.

"Pascal very truly remarks that 'the fulfilment of the prophecies is a perpetual miracle, and that no other proof is needed to show the divine origin of the Christian Religion.'"

Durtal had gone closer to the statues, standing by Saint Anne, and was looking at one on the left wearing a pointed cap, a sort of papal tiara with a crown round the edge, robed in an alb girt round the middle with knotted cord, and a large cope with a fringe; the features were grave, almost anxious, and the eye fixed with an absorbed gaze into the distance. This figure held a censer in one hand, and in the other a chalice covered with a paten on which there was a loaf; and this image of Melchizedec, the King of Salem, threw Durtal into a deep reverie.

He was, in fact, one of the most mysterious types of the Holy Scriptures--this monarch mentioned in Genesis as the Priest of the Most High God. He consummates the sacrifice of bread and wine, blesses Abram, receives tithes from him, and then vanishes into the darkness of history. And suddenly his name is found in a psalm of David's, who declares that the Messiah is a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec, and again he is lost without leaving a trace.

Then quite unexpectedly he reappears in the New Testament, and what Saint Paul says of him in the Epistle to the Hebrews makes him more enigmatical than ever. The apostle speaks of him as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abiding a priest continually." Saint Paul is explicit to show how great a person he was--and the dim light he casts on this figure goes out.

"You must confess that this King of Salem is a puzzle. What do the commentators think of him?" asked Durtal.

"They say but little. Only Saint Jerome observes that when Saint Paul speaks of him as without parents, without descent, without beginning, and without end, he does not mean to convey that Melchizedec came down from Heaven or was created _ab initio_ like the first man, by the Ancient of Days. The phrase simply means that he is introduced into the history of Abraham without our knowing whence he came, who he was, when he was born, or at what time he died.

"In fact, the inscrutable part played by this prototype of Jesus in the canonical Scriptures has led to the most grotesque legends and heresies.

"Some have asserted that he was Shem, the son of Noah; others have thought that he was Ham. Simon Logothetes considers him an Egyptian; Suidas believes him to have belonged to the accursed race of Canaanites, and that this is why the Bible says nothing of his ancestry.

"The gnostics revered him as an Eon superior to Jesus; and in the third century Theodore le Changeur also asserted that he was not a man, but a virtue transcending Christ, because Christ's priesthood was but a copy of Melchizedec's.

"According to another sect, he was neither more nor less than the Paraclete. But come, in the absence of early Scriptures what do the seers say? Does Sister Emmerich speak of him?"

"She tells us nothing precise," replied Durtal. "To her he was a sort of priestly angel charged with the preparation for the great Act of Redemption."

"That is very much the view held by Origen and Didymus, who also ascribed to him the angelic nature."

"Thus she perceives him long before the advent of Abram in various desert spots of Palestine; he unlocks the springs of Jordan, and in another passage of the life of Christ she adds that it was he who taught the Hebrews the culture of wheat and of the vine. In fact, she throws no light on this insoluble enigma."

"From the artist's point of view," Durtal went on, "Melchizedec is one of the best statues in this porch. But what a strange face is that of his neighbour Abraham, seen only three-quarters full, with hair like rolled grass, a beard like a river god, and a long nose straight from the forehead, coming down between the eyes without a bridge, like the proboscis of a tapir, with cheeks that seem swollen with cold, and a look--how shall I describe it?--of a conjuror who has made away with his son's head."

"In point of fact, he is listening to the commands of the angel, whom he cannot see; observe, below on the pedestal the ram caught in the thicket, and the symbolism is evident.

"This is the Father sacrificing his Son, and Isaac is the very image of the Son--Isaac bearing the wood to fire the altar, as Jesus bore the Cross; then the ram becomes figurative of the Saviour, and the bush in which he is caught by the horns is symbolical of the Crown of Thorns.

"To do full justice to this subject and to the teaching by figures that it contains, we ought also to have had the Patriarch's two wives carved on the supporting pillar or plinth, and his other son Ishmael. For, as you know, these two women are emblems, Hagar of the Old Dispensation, and Sarah of the New; the former disappears to make way for the second, the Old Law being merely the preparation for the New; and the two sons born of these two mothers are by analogy the children of the Books, and thus Ishmael represents the Israelites, and Isaac the Christians.

"Next to Abraham, the father of believers, stands Moses, as a symbol of Christ; for the deliverance of Israel is an image of the Redemption of Man snatched by the Saviour from the devil, just as the passage of the Red Sea is an image of Baptism. He holds the Table of the Law and the staff round which the Brazen Serpent is twined. Then comes Samuel, in many ways typical of Christ, the founder of the Royal Priesthood and of Pontifical Kingship; and last of all, David holding the Lamb and Crown of Calvary.

"I need hardly remind you that this Prophet-King, more than any other personage, prefigured the sorrows of the Messiah, and that he too, to make the resemblance more perfect, had his Judas in the person of Achitophel, who, like the later traitor, hanged himself."

"You must admit," said Durtal, "that these statues, before which the historians of this cathedral go into ecstasies, declaring in chorus they are the highest achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture, are far inferior to those of the twelfth century that adorn the great north porch. How evident is the lowering of the divine standard! Their action is freer, no doubt, and the play of drapery is broader. The rhubarb-stem plaits of the robes are fuller, and have some movement, but where is the grace as of a sculptured soul that we see in the royal porch? All these statues, with their massive heads, are thick-set and mute, devoid of communicative life. This is pious work--fine work, if you will--but devoid of the 'beyond'; here is art indeed, but it has ceased to be mysticism.

"Look at St. Anne with her gloomy expression, either cross or suffering--how far she is from the so-called Radegonde and Berthe!

"With the exception of two, St. John and St. Joseph over there in the innermost part of the arch, these are familiar figures. They also occur at Reims and at Amiens. And do you remember the Simeon, the Virgin, and the St. Anne at Reims? The Virgin so guilelessly charming, so exquisitely chaste, holding out the Infant to Simeon, who stands mild and devout in his solemn garb as High Priest. St. Anne--a head of the same type as St. Joseph's, and as those of two angels on the same frontal, standing by St. Nicasius, with his head cut off at the brows--St. Anne with a smiling, arch expression and yet elderly--a sharp little chin, large eyes, a thin, long, pointed nose, the look of a youthful dueña, kindly but knowing.

"But, indeed, those image-makers excelled in creating these singular, indefinable countenances. Do you recall Our Lady of Paris, later, I believe, by a century? She is scarcely pretty, but so expressive, with the smile of happiness parting such melancholy lips. Seen from one side She is smiling at Jesus, watchful, almost sportive; it would seem as though she were waiting for the Child to say some merry word before laughing out; She is a girl-mother, not yet accustomed to her Child's caress. Seen from another angle, this smile, apparently in the bud, has vanished. The mouth is puckered in sorrow, and promises tears.

"Perhaps when he succeeded in stamping on the face of Our Lady two such opposite expressions of peace and of fear, the sculptor intended to suggest at once the joy of the Nativity and the anticipated anguish of Calvary. Thus he has portrayed in one and the same image, the Mother of Sorrows and the Mother of Joy--has, without knowing it, embodied the prototypes of the Virgin of La Salette and the Virgin of Lourdes.

"And yet all this is inferior to the living and dignified art, so full of individuality and mystery, that we see in the royal porch of Chartres!"

"I will not contradict you," said the Abbé Plomb. "Now that we have studied the series of types placed on St. Anne's left hand, let us consider the prophetic series on her right.

"First we see Isaiah; the pedestal on which he stands represents Jesse sleeping. The familiar stem, rooted in him, passes between the prophet's feet, and the branches of the Virgin's ancestry according to the flesh and the spirit, as they rise, fill the four courses of moulding in the central arch. By his side is Jeremiah, who, meditating on the Passion of Christ, wrote this lamentable passage which is read in the fifth lesson of the second Nocturn on Easter Eve: 'All ye that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.' Next Simeon holding the Infant whose Birth he had foreseen, at the same time with the sorrows of the Virgin and the anguish of Golgotha; Saint John the Baptist, and finally Saint Peter, whose dress is an interesting study since it is copied from that of the thirteenth-century Popes.

"With what care is every detail wrought! Admire the treatment of the sandals, the gloves, the broidered amice, the alb, the maniple, the dalmatic, the pallium marked with six crosses, the triple crown, the conical tiara of brocaded silk, the pontifical breastplate, everything is chiselled, pierced, and patterned as if by a goldsmith."

"Very true. But how superior altogether is the Saint John to his fellows on this front. What mastery we discern in that hollow, emaciated face, as expressive as the others are dull. He is apart from the conventional and hackneyed type. He stands upright, savage but mild, with his beard in curling prongs, his lean frame, his raiment of camel-skin; we can hear him speaking as he points to the Lamb carrying the hastate cross surrounded by a nimbus, pressing it to his bosom with both hands. That statue is sublime, and it is most certainly not by the same hand that carved the Abraham, nor even his immediate neighbour, Samuel. This prophet appears to be offering to David, who cares not, a lamb he is feeling, head downwards. He is a butcher pricing his goods, weighing the meat, inviting you to feel it, and hesitating to sell till he gets the best price. How different from the Saint John!"

"The tympanum of the door will have no charm for us," the Abbé went on. "The death of the Virgin, Her assumption and coronation are more curious to read of in the Golden Legend than to study in those has-reliefs which are but an epitome.

"We will proceed to the left-hand doorway.

"It is much mutilated, in a lamentable state of ruin. Most of the large statues have disappeared. There were once, it would seem, as on the royal porch of Notre Dame at Paris and the southern porch at Reims, the figures of the Synagogue and the Church; also Leah and Rachel, typifying the active and the contemplative life, of which we shall decipher the details recorded in the archivolt.

"Of the large figures that remain, three are regarded as masterpieces: the Virgin, Saint Elizabeth, and Daniel.

"That is saying a great deal," cried Durtal. "They are stupid-looking and the drapery is cold; the arrangement of their robes recalls the Greek peplum; they have a prophetic savour of the Renaissance."

"I will not contradict you; but what is really attractive is the scheme of ideas expressed by the figures in the hollow mouldings of the arch of this portal, based on an equilateral triangle. As to the tympanum, which displays the Nativity, the calling of the Shepherds of Bethlehem, the dream and adoration of the Kings, it is marred and worn by time; nor is it in a style of art that can move us deeply.

"Study the mouldings of the arch with the four rows of images that adorn them. First the inner one, with its ten torch-bearing angels; the second, illustrating the parable of the wise and foolish virgins; the third, representing the _Psychomachia_, or struggle between the Virtues and the Vices; the fourth, a row of twelve queens embodying the twelve fruits of the Spirit; and linger over the enchanting series of statues in the moulding at the very edge of the archway of the porch, representing the occupations of the active and the contemplative life.

"The active life, on the left, is imagined in accordance with the picture of the virtuous woman in the last chapter of Proverbs. She is seen washing wool in a bowl, carding it, stripping the flax, beating it, spinning it on a distaff, and winding it into hanks.

"On the right is seen the contemplative life; a woman praying, holding a closed book, opening it, reading it; she shuts it to meditate on it, teaches others, and falls into an ecstasy.

"Finally, in the outermost hollow of the moulding of the arch, the nearest to us and the most visible, there are fourteen statues of queens, leaning on shields with coats-of-arms, and formerly holding banners. The meaning of these statuettes has been much discussed, especially of the second figure on the left, which is named '_Libertas_' the word being carved in the stone. Didron believed them to represent the domestic and social virtues; but the question has been finally and definitively settled by the most erudite and clearsighted symbolist of our day, Madame Félicie d'Ayzac, who, in a very edifying pamphlet published in 1843 on these statues and on the animals of the Tetramorph, has proved to demonstration that these fourteen queens are none else than the fourteen heavenly Beatitudes as enumerated by Saint Anselm: Beauty, Liberty, Honour, Joy, Pleasure, Agility, Strength, Concord, Friendship, Length of Days, Power, Health, Safety, and Wisdom.

"Is not this porch, as a whole, so closely set with imagery, one of the most ingenious and interesting doorways known, from the points of view of theology and of mysticism alike?"

"And no less from the point of view of art. You are perfectly right; these toiling and meditative women are so delicate and so loving, that we can but regret that they should be hidden in the shadow of a cavern. What artists must those have been who worked thus for the glory of God and for their own satisfaction, creating marvels while knowing that no man would see them!"

"And they had not even the vanity to sign them; they were always anonymous."

"Ah! they were men of a different mould from us. Prouder souls, and humbler."

"And holier," added the Abbé. "Shall we now inquire into the iconography of the right-hand portal? It has suffered less, and may be explained in a few words.

"This sculptured vault is, as you know, dedicated to types of Mary; but we might more accurately say that it is devoted to prototypes of Christ, for in this doorway, as in the other two, indeed, the image-makers of the thirteenth century have made it their task to identity the Son with the Mother."

"In fact, most of the personages we have already studied relate more especially to Christ. What, then, are those in the Old Testament, which are more essentially proper to the daughter of Joachim, and transferred in images of stone to be deciphered here?"

"The allegories of the Virgin in the Scriptures are numberless. Whole books, as the Song of Songs and the Book of Wisdom, allude in every verse to Her beauty and wisdom. As to the non-human emblems that may be applied to Her, you know them well: Noah's Ark, in which the Redeemer dwells; the Dove, the Rainbow, as a sign of alliance between the Lord and the earth; the burning bush whence came out the name of God; the cloud of fire guiding Israel in the desert; the Rod of Aaron which alone blossomed of those of the twelve tribes taken by Moses; the Ark of the Covenant; Gideon's fleece; and a whole series, if possible, more obviously representative; David's tower; Solomon's throne; the garden enclosed and the fountain sealed of the Canticle; the dial of Ahaz; Elijah's saving cloud; Ezekiel's doorway--and I mention none but those of which the interpretation has received the seal and sanction of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

"As to the living beings that prefigured Her on earth, instances abound; the greater part of the famous women of the Old Testament are but anticipatory images of Her graces. Sarah, to whom an angel foretells the birth of a son who is himself a type of the Son; Miriam, the sister of Moses, who, by saving her brother from the river, freed the Jews; Jephthah's daughter; Deborah, the prophetess; Jael, who, like the Virgin, was called Blessed among women; Hannah, the mother of Samuel, whose song of praise seems like a forecast of the _Magnificat_; Jehosheba preserving Joash from the fury of Athaliah, as the Virgin afterwards saved Jesus from the wrath of Herod; Ruth personifying both the contemplative and the active life; Rebecca, Rachel, Abigail, Solomon's mother, the mother of the Maccabees, who witnessed the death of her sons; and again those whose names are inscribed under these arches; Judith and Esther, the first representative of courageous chastity, and the second of mercy and justice."

"However, to avoid confusion, we will follow the statues in order as they stand in this porch, three on each side.

"On the left Balaam, the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.

"On the right, Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith or Esther, and Joseph."

"Balaam is this statue of a worthy peasant, smug and friendly, smiling in his beard, a stick in his hand and a hat like a pie-dish; and the Queen of Sheba, the woman who bends forward a little, looking as if she were cross-questioning and arguing over some deed she condemned. But what have these two persons to do with the life of the Virgin?"

"Balaam is a type of the Messiah. It was he who prophesied that a star should come out of Jacob and a sceptre rise out of Israel. As to the Queen of Sheba, according to the teaching of the Fathers, she is an image of the Church; Solomon's spouse, as the Church is the spouse of Christ."

"Well, well," muttered Durtal to himself. "The thirteenth century could not give a fitting presentment of that queen, whom we picture to ourselves as dressed with foolish magnificence, rocking on a camel across the desert at the head of a caravan under the blazing sky across the furnace of sand. Her charms have appealed to writers, and not the smallest of them; Flaubert for one--this Queen Balkis, Mékida or Nicaule. But in the '_Tentation de Saint Antoine_' she has failed to assume any form but that of a puerile and flimsy creature, a skipping and lisping puppet. In fact, no one but Gustave Moreau, the painter of Salome, could represent the woman, a virgin and a courtesan, a casuist and a coquette. He only could give life, under the flowered panoply of dress and the blazing gorget of jewels, to the crowned foreign face, with its smile as of an artless sphinx, come from so far to ask enigmas. Such a woman is too complicated for the spirit and the ingenuous art of the Middle Ages.

"Indeed, the sculptured image is neither mysterious nor suggestive. She is hardly pretty, and stands in the obsequious attitude of an advocate. Solomon looks like a jovial good fellow. The two effigies on the other side of the door might perhaps invite attention if they were not so completely crushed by the third. Again a question. By what right does the author of that admirable book 'Ecclesiastes' find a place in these ranks of honour?"

"Jesus the son of Sirach prefigures the Messiah as a Prophet and a Doctor. As to the figure next to him, it may equally well be Judith or Esther: her identity is doubtful; there is nothing that can help us to determine it.

"At any rate, as I told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin. As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he is the prototype of Christ."

Durtal paused to gaze up at the beardless face, with curling hair cut close round. The youth wore a tunic under a surcoat embroidered round the neck, and he stood motionless, a sceptre in his hand. He might be a very young monk, humble, simple, and so far advanced in the mystic road that he was unconscious of it. This statue was undoubtedly a portrait, and it seemed certain that some refined and innocent novice had served as a model to the artist. It was the work of a chastened and happy soul superior to the crowd. "This one, even more than the St. John, is a perfect dream," said Durtal to the Abbé, who assented with a nod, and went on,--

"The sculptures over the arches are practically invisible, for you must dislocate your neck to see them. Nor is the art they display exciting. Only the subjects are interesting. Besides a row of angels bearing stars and torches, they represent the achievements of Gideon; the story of Samson, who, when a prisoner, rose in the night, and carrying away the gates of Gaza, escaped from the town, as Christ broke the gates of death, and escaped alive from His sepulchre; the history of Tobit, as a divine paragon of mercy and patience; and finally, in the corner we find a replica of the grand porch, the signs of the zodiac, and a calendar in sculptured stone.

"The tympanum, as you see, is divided into two portions.

"In the upper part we see the Judgment of Solomon, as figuring the Sun of Justice, Christ Himself.

"In the lower half Job lies stretched on his dunghill, and the Messiah, of whom he is a prototype, comes, supported by two angels, to give him a palm-branch.

"To complete the elucidation of the symbolism of these doorways, it now only remains to glance at the three arches of the porch that precedes them. Here we see chiefly the benefactors of the cathedral and the saints of the See; also, mingled with these, certain prophets for whom there was not room in the arches of the doors. This vestibule is, so to speak, a postscript, a supplement added to the work.

"Here, where we stand in the right-hand arch are Saint Potentien, the first apostle of Chartres, and Saint Modesta, the daughter of Quirinus, the Governor of the city, who killed her because she would not deny Christ. Here you see Ferdinand of Castille. He presented certain windows distinguished by his arms, _gules, three castles or_, side by side with the azure shield and fleur-de-lys of France, in the principal window of this front. Next to him that shrewd and severe face is probably that of Baruch, the judge, and here, barefoot and burthened with a penitent's satchel, you see Saint Louis, who loaded the cathedral with gifts and inaugurated its use.

"Under the porch of the middle door are two vacant pedestals, on which formerly stood the effigies of Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion, two of the most liberal donors to the church. On the other plinths stand the Comte and Comtesse de Boulogne, a buxom dame with masculine features, wearing a biretta; a prophet who is nameless, but no doubt Ezekiel, for he is missing from the series in this porch; Louis VIII., Saint Louis' father; and, finally, that king's sister Isabella, who founded the Abbey of Longchamps under the rule of Saint Clare. She is dressed as a nun, and next her in the shadow is a personage of the Old Dispensation carrying a censer, like Melchizedec. Remark, too, the firm and solemn mien of that priest, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, whose canticle '_Benedictus_' foretells the blessings of Christ.

"Thus ends our review of this wonderful text-book of the Old Testament types, and the historical memorial of those benefactors whose gifts endowed the church with this sculptured imagery of the Ancient Word."

Durtal lighted a cigarette, and they walked up and down in front of the palace railing.

"Setting aside the question of art," said Durtal, "in this long array of Christ's ancestors there is one--David--who really confounds me, for he is the most complex of all; at once so august and so small! he is quite puzzling!"

"Why?"

"Well, only think of the life of the man who was by turns shepherd, warrior, and outlaw chief, an omnipotent king and a fugitive without either hearth or home; who was a wonderful poet and an exact prophet and seer! And is not the monarch's character even more enigmatical than his career?

"He was mild and indulgent, devoid of rancour and hatred, and yet he was ferocious. Remember the punishments he inflicted on the Ammonites; his vengeance was appalling. He had them sawn asunder, cut them with harrows of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.

"He was loyal, wholly devoted to the Lord, and just; but he committed the crime of adultery, and ordered the death of the husband he had betrayed. What contradictions!"

"To understand David," said the Abbé Plomb, "you must not think of him apart from his surroundings, nor take him out of the age in which he lived, otherwise you measure him by the ideas of our own time, and that is absurd. In the Asiatic conception of royalty, adultery was almost permitted to a being whom his subjects regarded as superior to the common run of humanity; besides, women were then as a species of cattle belonging almost absolutely to him as the despot and supreme master. It was but the exercise of his regal power, as has been plainly shown by Monsieur Dieulafoy in his study of that king. And, on the other hand, if he is accused of tortures and bloodshed, why, the whole of the Old Testament is full of them! Jehovah Himself pours out blood like water, and exterminates men as if they were flies. It is well not to forget that the world then still lived under the Law of Fear. So it is not very surprising that, with a view to terrifying his enemies, whose manners and customs were not indeed any milder than his own, he should have tortured the inhabitants of Rabbah and baked the Ammonites.

"But in contrast to these acts of violence and the sins which he expiated, see how generous he was to Saul, and admire the magnanimity and charity of the man whom the followers of Renan would have us regard as a bandit chief and outlaw. Remember, too, that he taught the world, as yet ignorant, the virtues which at a later time Christ was to preach--humility in its most touching form, and repentance in its bitterest shape. When the prophet Nathan reproved him for the murder of Uriah, he confessed his sin with tears, fell on his face before God, bravely accepted the most terrible punishment: incest and murder in his family, the rebellion and death of his son, treason, misery, and a desperate flight in the woods; and with what urgency he implores for pardon in the '_Miserere_,' with what love and contrition he cries to the God he had offended!

"He was a man whose vices were small and few if compared with those of the kings of his time--of admirable and exceptional virtues if compared with those of sovereigns of any time of every age. Why, then, fail to understand that God should have chosen him as a precursor? Besides, Jesus came to ransom sinners, He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world. Was it not natural, then, that He should take to prefigure Him, a man who, like others, had sinned?"

"Yes; that is true, no doubt."

And that evening, when he was away from the Abbé Plomb, from whom he parted on the church steps, as Durtal stretched himself on his bed, he recapitulated in his memory this theory of the Old Testament personages and the sculpture in the porch.

"To epitomize this north front," said he to himself, "it must be regarded as an abridged history of the Redemption prepared so long beforehand, a table of sacred history, a compendium of the Mosaic Law, and at the same time foreshadowing the Christian law.

"The vocation of the Jewish nation is set forth in these three doorways, their whole mission from Abraham to Moses; from Moses to the Babylonian Captivity; from the Captivity till the death of Christ, comprehending three phases of its history: the making of Israel, its independent existence, its life among the Gentiles.

"And how slowly, with what difficulty, was this fusion of tribes achieved! With what waste and what ejection of dross! What massacres were needed to discipline those rapacious wanderers, to quell the greed and licentiousness of the race!"

And in a succession of bewildering images he beheld the irruption into Judæa of the headlong and indignant prophets, hurling imprecations against the crimes of the kings and the atrocities of that unstable race perpetually tempted by the voluptuous worships of Asia, always rebelling and complaining, and ready to break the iron bit with which Moses had subdued them.

And prominent in this group of declaiming judges, towering above the masses, he saw Samuel, the man of contradictions, going whither the Lord drove him, achieving work which he was destined to overthrow, creating the monarchy which he reprobated, consecrating a fanatic king--a sort of madman, who passes across behind the transparent sheet of history with frantic and threatening gestures; and then Samuel has to overwhelm this extraordinary Saul under the burthen of his curses, to anoint David king--David, whom another prophet is to accuse of his crimes. And these inspired men succeed each other, continuing from year to year their task of guardians of the public soul, watching over the consciences of judges and kings, expectant of the Divine word, and ready to proclaim it over the head of the crowd; announcing disasters, ending often as martyrs, prominent from beginning to end of the sacred annals till they disappear in John beheaded by an Herodias!

Then came Elijah, cursing the worship of Baal, contending with the dreadful Jezebel; Elijah founding the first society of monks, the only man of the Old Testament history except Enoch who did not die; and Elisha, his disciple; the greater prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and the groups of minor prophets announcing the advent of the Son, rising up in commination or lamentation, threatening or comforting the people.

The whole history of Israel flowed along in a torrent of curses, rivers of blood, oceans of tears!

This dismal procession at last oppressed Durtal. With closed eyes he suddenly beheld a patriarch who stood before him, and he recognized with awe that this was Moses, an old man with a beard like a cataract, hair sweeping his shoulders, a master workman whose powerful hands had kneaded those rough Hebrews and coagulated their medley hordes. He was indeed father and lawgiver to this people.

Facing the scene on Calvary there rose before him the scene on Sinai, the close and the opening of the great chronicle of the nation that was dispersed by its own crime, enclosing the whole purpose of its existence in the space between those two hills.

A terrific spectacle! Moses alone on the smoking height, while lightnings rend the clouds and the mountain trembles at the sound of the invisible trumpet. Below, the awe-stricken people fly; and Moses, unmoved amid the roar of thunder and the repeated fires of lightning, listens to Him who Is, and who dictates the terms of His protection of Israel; and then Moses, with shining face, descends from the Mount, which, according to St. John Damascene, is the type of the Virgin's Womb, as the smoke that rises from it is that of the desires and flames of the Holy Spirit.

Suddenly this picture vanished; the Patriarch remained, and by his side appeared the first High Priest of the worship of Jehovah, whom the sculptors had omitted to represent on the exterior of the porch, but whose image the glass-workers have portrayed in a window of the same front; Aaron, the great Pontiff, anointed by Moses.

And this ceremony, during which Moses conferred the order of priesthood on the person and the descendants of his elder brother, arose before Durtal's fancy as a terrific scene. The details he had formerly read of this ordination, the ceremonies lasting seven days, recurred to his mind. After ablution and the anointing with oil, the holocaust of victims began. Flesh sputtered on the walls, mingling the black stench of burnt fat with the blue vapour of incense; the Patriarch anointed the right ear and thumb and foot of Aaron and his sons with blood; then, taking up the flesh of the sacrifice, he placed them in the hands of the new-made priests, who rocked first on one foot and then on the other, thus waving the offerings above the altar.

Then all bowed their heads under a shower of oil mingled with blood with which the Consecrator inundated them. They looked like slaughterers from the shambles and lamp trimmers, all sprinkled as they were with clots of red mire, on which glistened yellow eyes.

And then, as in the swift change of magic-lantern slides, this savage scene, this worn-out symbol of a splendid and subtle liturgy, stammered out in a hoarse voice, disappeared, giving way to the solemn array of Levites and priests marching in procession under the guidance of Aaron, resplendent in his turban with the crown of gold above it, in his purple robe, on its hem the open pomegranates of scarlet and blue, with tinkling bells of gold; and he wore the linen ephod, girt with a girdle, blue and purple and scarlet, and kept in its place by shoulder-pieces fastened with onyx stones, his breastplate in a blaze, flashing sparks that lighted up as he moved in the twelve gems of the breastplate.

Again the scene changed. He beheld an amazing palace; under the shade of its domes of giddy height, tropical trees and flowers were planted by tepid pools; monkeys sported there, hanging in bunches to the boughs, while long-drawn, insinuating melodies were scraped on stringed instruments, and the rattle of tambourines made the eyed plumes quiver in the peacocks' outspread tails.

In this strange hot-bed, filled with clumps of flowers and of women, this immense harem where his seven hundred princesses and his three hundred concubines disported themselves, Solomon watched the whirl of dances, gazed at the living hedge of women, seen against the background of gold-plated walls, their bodies clothed only in the transparent veil of vapour rising from resins burning on tripods.

He appeared as a typical Eastern monarch, a sort of Khalif or Sultan, or fairy-tale Rajah--the prodigious king at once polygamous, unbridled, insatiable by luxury, and learned, artistic, peace-loving, the wisest among men. In advance of the ideas of his time, he was the great builder in Israel, and the commerce of the country was of his making. He left such a reputation for wisdom and justice that he came at last to be regarded as an enchanter and wizard. Even Josephus tells us that he wrote a book of Magic, of incantations for laying evil spirits; in the Middle Ages he was said to have owned a magic ring, charms, forms of evocation, secrets for exorcism; and in all these legends the image of the king becomes confused.

And he would remain to this day a figure out of the Thousand and One Nights, were it not that in the decline of his glory we see him as a grandiose image of the mournfulness of life, the vanity of joy, the nothingness of man.

His old age was melancholy. Exhausted and governed by women, he denied God and sacrificed to idols. We discern in him wide gaps, vast clearings in the soul. Weary of everything, sick of enjoyment, and drunken with sin, he wrote some admirable reflections and anticipated the blackest pessimism of our day, summing up the misery of him who endures the condemnation of living, in phrases that are its final expression. What distress is that of the Preacher: All the days of man are sorrow, and his travail grief; better is the day of death than the day of birth; all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

After his death, too, the old king remains a mystery. Had he expiated his apostacy and his fall? Was he, like his fathers, received into Abraham's bosom? And the greatest writers of the Church have not agreed about it.

According to St. Irenæus, St. Hilary, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome, his penance was accomplished, and he is saved.

According to Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great, he did not repent to amendment, and so he is damned.

Durtal turned over in his bed and tried to lose consciousness. Everything was in confusion in his brain, and at last he fell into disturbed slumbers mingled with hideous nightmares, in which he saw Madame Mesurat standing in the place of the queen on a pedestal in the porch; and Durtal fumed at her ugliness, raging against the Canons, to whom he vainly appealed to remove his housekeeper and replace the queen.

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