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.