any time of every age. Why, then, fail to
understand that God should have chosen him as a precursor? Besides,
Jesus came to ransom sinners, He took upon Himself the sins of the whole
world. Was it not natural, then, that He should take to prefigure Him, a
man who, like others, had sinned?"

"Yes; that is true, no doubt."

And that evening, when he was away from the Abbe Plomb, from whom he
parted on the church steps, as Durtal stretched himself on his bed, he
recapitulated in his memory this theory of the Old Testament personages
and the sculpture in the porch.

"To epitomize this north front," said he to himself, "it must be
regarded as an abridged history of the Redemption prepared so long
beforehand, a table of sacred history, a compendium of the Mosaic Law,
and at the same time foreshadowing the Christian law.

"The vocation of the Jewish nation is set forth in these three doorways,
their whole mission from Abraham to Moses; from Moses to the Babylonian
Captivity; from the Captivity till the death of Christ, comprehending
three phases of its history: the making of Israel, its independent
existence, its life among the Gentiles.

"And how slowly, with what difficulty, was this fusion of tribes
achieved! With what waste and what ejection of dross! What massacres
were needed to discipline those rapacious wanderers, to quell the greed
and licentiousness of the race!"

And in a succession of bewildering images he beheld the irruption into
Judaea of the headlong and indignant prophets, hurling imprecations
against the crimes of the kings and the atrocities of that unstable race
perpetually tempted by the voluptuous worships of Asia, always rebelling
and complaining, and ready to break the iron bit with which Moses had
subdued them.

And prominent in this group of declaiming judges, towering above the
masses, he saw Samuel, the man of contradictions, going whither the Lord
drove him, achieving work which he was destined to overthrow, creating
the monarchy which he reprobated, consecrating a fanatic king--a sort of
madman, who passes across behind the transparent sheet of history with
frantic and threatening gestures; and then Samuel has to overwhelm this
extraordinary Saul under the burthen of his curses, to anoint David
king--David, whom another prophet is to accuse of his crimes. And these
inspired men succeed each other, continuing from year to year their task
of guardians of the public soul, watching over the co