d on the Ammonites; his
vengeance was appalling. He had them sawn asunder, cut them with harrows
of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.

"He was loyal, wholly devoted to the Lord, and just; but he committed
the crime of adultery, and ordered the death of the husband he had
betrayed. What contradictions!"

"To understand David," said the Abbe Plomb, "you must not think of him
apart from his surroundings, nor take him out of the age in which he
lived, otherwise you measure him by the ideas of our own time, and that
is absurd. In the Asiatic conception of royalty, adultery was almost
permitted to a being whom his subjects regarded as superior to the
common run of humanity; besides, women were then as a species of cattle
belonging almost absolutely to him as the despot and supreme master. It
was but the exercise of his regal power, as has been plainly shown by
Monsieur Dieulafoy in his study of that king. And, on the other hand, if
he is accused of tortures and bloodshed, why, the whole of the Old
Testament is full of them! Jehovah Himself pours out blood like water,
and exterminates men as if they were flies. It is well not to forget
that the world then still lived under the Law of Fear. So it is not very
surprising that, with a view to terrifying his enemies, whose manners
and customs were not indeed any milder than his own, he should have
tortured the inhabitants of Rabbah and baked the Ammonites.

"But in contrast to these acts of violence and the sins which he
expiated, see how generous he was to Saul, and admire the magnanimity
and charity of the man whom the followers of Renan would have us regard
as a bandit chief and outlaw. Remember, too, that he taught the world,
as yet ignorant, the virtues which at a later time Christ was to
preach--humility in its most touching form, and repentance in its
bitterest shape. When the prophet Nathan reproved him for the murder of
Uriah, he confessed his sin with tears, fell on his face before God,
bravely accepted the most terrible punishment: incest and murder in his
family, the rebellion and death of his son, treason, misery, and a
desperate flight in the woods; and with what urgency he implores for
pardon in the '_Miserere_,' with what love and contrition he cries to
the God he had offended!

"He was a man whose vices were small and few if compared with those of
the kings of his time--of admirable and exceptional virtues if compared
with those of sovereigns of