owever, Saltus has protested to me that
it is an idea that might have occurred to any one. "I put it in," he
added, "to make the action more nervous." The book begins well with a
description of Herod's court and Rome in Judea, but as a whole it is
unsatisfactory. Once the plot develops Saltus seems to lose interest.
He lazily quotes whole scenes from the Bible (George Moore very
cleverly avoided this pitfall in "The Brook Kerith"). The early
chapters suggest "Imperial Purple," which appeared a year later and
upon which he may well have been at work at this time. There is a
foreshadowing, too, of "The Lords of the Ghostland" in a very amusing
and slightly cynical passage in which Mary as a child listens to
Sephorah the sorceress tell legends and myths of Assyria and Egypt.
Mary interrupts with "Why you mean Moses! You mean Noah!" just as a
child of today, if confronted with the situations in the Greek dramas
would attribute them to Bayard Veiller or Eugene Walter. Saltus is too
much of a scholar to find much novelty in Christianity. But aside from
this passage cynicism is lacking from this book, a quality which makes
another story on the same theme, "Le Procurateur de Judee," one of the
greatest short stories in any language. Mary's sins are quickly passed
over and we come almost immediately to her conversion. Herod Antipas,
with his "fan-shaped beard" and vacillating Pilate, quite comparable
to a modern politician, are the most human and best-realized
characters in a book which should have been greater than it is. "Mary
Magdalen" is dedicated to Henry James.

"The facts in the Curious Case of H. Hyrtl, esq."[20] is a slight yarn
in the mellow Stevenson manner, with a kindly old gentleman as the
messenger of the supernatural who provides the wherewithal for a
marriage between an impoverished artist, who is painting
Heliogabolus's feast of roses, and his sweet young thing. Quite a
departure this from the usual Saltus manner; nevertheless there are
two deaths, one by shock, the other in a railway accident. The plot
depends on as many impossible entrances and exits as a Palais Royal
farce and the reader is asked to believe in many coincidences. The
book is dedicated to Lorillard Ronalds who, the author explains in a
few French phrases, asked him to write something "_de tres pure et de
tres chaste, pour une jeunesse, sans doute_." He adds that the story
is a rewriting of a tale which had appeared twenty years earlier.

"Im