In the next scene--after a rather woolly and unintelligible interlude--we see _Joseph_ retiring to his couch in an alcove behind the place where the banqueting-table had been. You will judge how urgent was the lady's keenness to probe the mysteries of his divine nature when I tell you that she could not wait till the morning to pursue her enquiries, but must needs visit him in his chamber at dead of night, and wearing the one garment of the hour. At first, still half dreaming, he mistakes her for an angel (he had already seen one in his sleep), but subsequently, growing suspicious, he repels her with a dignified disdain. For I must tell you that, whatever the guide-book may allege about the loftiness of her designs, the music gave her away. It reverted, in fact, to the motive of those passages which had already accompanied and illustrated the nuptial dance, the dance (as Herr Tiessen calls it) of "burning Love-longing." At this juncture, _Potiphar_ and his minions break upon the scene. His wife, after denouncing _Joseph_, is distracted between passion of hatred and passion of love, and there is some play (reminding one of _L'Apres-midi d'un Faune_) with the purple cloak which _Joseph_ had discarded. Presently she eludes her dilemma by fainting. Meanwhile it has been the work of a moment to order up a brazier, a pair of pincers, a poker, a headsman and an axe. The instruments of torture waste no time in getting red-hot; and we anticipate the worst. _Joseph_, however, who has ignored these preparations and maintained an attitude of superbly indifferent aloofness, suddenly becomes luminous under great pressure of limelight; and most of the cast, including a ballet of female dervishes, are abashed to the ground. Now appears, on the open-work entresol at the back of the stage, an archangel. The guide-book is in error where it says that he glides downwards on a shaft of light radiating from a star. As a matter of fact he walks down the main staircase to the ground floor. Approaching _Joseph_ he takes him by the hand and "leads him heavenwards" by the same flight of steps; and we are to understand that, in the opinion of Herr Strauss, the boy's subsequent career, as recorded in the Hebraic Scriptures, may be treated as negligible. I should like, in excuse of my own flippancy, to assume the same detachment, and to regard this ballet-theme as having practically no relation whatever to Biblical history, but being just one of many themes out of Oriental lore, mostly secular, that lend themselves to the drama of disappointed passion. My only serious protest is against the hypocrisy which pretends, with regard to _Potiphar's Wife_, to see a spiritual significance in what is mere vulgar animalism.