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?”