“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, Mekida 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 Abbe, who assented with a nod, and went on,—­