“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.”