What a delight it was in this distant Mesopotamian plain, where countless lambs still skip about their solicitous mothers, as they did when Leah and Rachel tended their father’s flocks in the long ago, to recall the noble fiction of Dante who, in his Terrestrial Paradise, makes these charming women of humanity’s youth the symbols of the active and the contemplative life as are Martha and Mary in the New Testament! And what a pleasure it was to read on this romantic ground in my well-thumbed _Divina Commedia_ the oft-conned verses: _About the hour,_ _As I believe, when Venus from the east_ _First lighted on the mountain, she whose orb_ _Seems always glowing with the fire of love,_ _A lady young and beautiful, I dreamed,_ _Was passing o’er a lea and, as she came,_ _Methought I saw her ever and anon_ _Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:_ _Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,_ _That I am Leah: for my brow to weave_ _A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply._ _To please me at the crystal mirror, here_ _I deck me. By my sister Rachel, she_ _Before her glass abides the live-long day,_ _Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less_ _Than I with this delightful task. Her joy_ _In contemplation, as in labor mine._[309] I am loath to leave this patriarchal Arcady--the once happy home of Rachel and Leah and Rebecca and those near and dear to them--without referring to a fable associated with this region, in which oriental fancy attains its loftiest flight. The thirty pieces of silver for which Judas Iscariot betrayed his Master, were, it was fabled, coined by Thare--Terah in the King James Version--and given to his son Abraham, who gave them to Isaac; “Isaac bought a village with them; the owner of the village carried them to Pharaoh; Pharaoh sent them to Solomon, the son of David, for the building of his temple; and Solomon took them and placed them round about the door of the altar.” They were taken thence to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave them to some Persian youths who had been his hostages. These youths then gave the coins to their fathers who were the three Magi. When Christ was born, and they saw His star, they, taking the pieces of silver with them, set out on their journey to Bethlehem. Arriving near Edessa they mislaid the coins, which were found by some traveling merchants, who spent them in the purchase of a seamless tunic which an angel had given to some shepherds. Informed of these extraordinary facts, King Abgar got possession of the tunic and the pieces of silver and sent them to Our Lord in grateful recognition for the good He had done him in healing his sickness. The Savior retained the tunic but sent the pieces of silver to the Jewish treasury. These were the thirty pieces which Judas received for delivering his Master into the hands of the chief priests and which after the traitor had hanged himself, were used for the