there sat a woman of loveliness so
transcendent, that, when suddenly revealed, as now, out of deepest
darkness, she appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was
she born of woman? Was it perhaps the angel--so the evangelist argued
with himself--that met him in the desert after sunset, and
strengthened him by secret talk? The evangelist went up, and touched
her forehead; and when he found that she was indeed human, and
guessed, from the station which she had chosen, that she waited for
some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he groaned
heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, but half to her, "Wert
thou, poor ruined flower, adorned so divinely at thy birth--glorified
in such excess that not Solomon in all his pomp--no, nor even the
lilies of the field--can approach thy gifts--only that thou shouldest
grieve the holy spirit of God?" The woman trembled exceedingly, and
said, "Rabbi, what should I do? For behold! all men forsake me." The
evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to himself he said, "Now
will I search this woman's heart--whether in very truth it inclineth
itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery compulsion." Turning
therefore to the woman, the Prophet[50] said, "Listen: I am the
messenger of Him whom thou hast not known; of Him that made Lebanon
and the cedars of Lebanon; that made the sea, and the heavens, and the
host of the stars; that made the light; that made the darkness; that
blew the spirit of life into the nostrils of man. His messenger I am:
and from Him all power is given me to bind and to loose, to build and
to pull down. Ask, therefore, whatsoever thou wilt--great or
small--and through me thou shalt receive it from God. But, my child,
ask not amiss. For God is able out of thy own evil asking to weave
snares for thy footing. And oftentimes to the lambs whom He loves, He
gives by seeming to refuse; gives in some better sense, or" (and his
voice swelled into the power of anthems) "in some far happier world.
Now, therefore, my daughter, be wise on thy own behalf; and say what
it is that I shall ask for thee from God." But the Daughter of Lebanon
needed not his caution; for immediately dropping on one knee to God's
ambassador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell upon
the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her clasped hands in
supplication, and said, in answer to the evangelist asking for a
second time what gift he should call down upon her f