fernes is the composite picture of all the Biblical
heathen chieftains. His every action breathes power. He is an Assyrian
bull, a winged lion, and a god at the same time, and divine honors are
paid to him every moment.

Nathan and Naomi are two Arcadian lovers. In their shy meetings they
express the life of the normal Bethulia. They are seen among the reapers
outside the city or at the well near the wall, or on the streets of the
ancient town. They are generally doing the things the crowd behind them
is doing, meanwhile evolving their own little heart affair. Finally when
the Assyrian comes down like a wolf on the fold, the gentle Naomi becomes
a prisoner in Holofernes' camp. She is in the foreground, a
representative of the crowd of prisoners. Nathan is photographed on the
wall as the particular defender of the town in whom we are most
interested.

The pictures of the crowd's normal activities avoid jerkiness and haste.
They do not abound in the boresome self-conscious quietude that some
producers have substituted for the usual twitching. Each actor in the
assemblies has a refreshing equipment in gentle gesticulation; for the
manners and customs of Bethulia must needs be different from those of
America. Though the population moves together as a river, each citizen is
quite preoccupied. To the furthest corner of the picture, they are
egotistical as human beings. The elder goes by, in theological
conversation with his friend. He thinks his theology is important. The
mother goes by, all absorbed in her child. To her it is the only child in
the world.

Alternated with these scenes is the terrible rush of the Assyrian army,
on to exploration, battle, and glory. The speed of their setting out
becomes actual, because it is contrasted with the deliberation of the
Jewish town. At length the Assyrians are along those hills and valleys
and below the wall of defence. The population is on top of the
battlements, beating them back the more desperately because they are
separated from the water-supply, the wells in the fields where once the
lovers met. In a lull in the siege, by a connivance of the elders, Judith
is let out of a little door in the wall. And while the fortune of her
people is most desperate she is shown in the quiet shelter of the tent of
Holofernes. Sinuous in grace, tranced, passionately in love, she has
forgotten her peculiar task. She is in a sense Bethulia itself, the race
of Israel made over into a woman, whi