This liberal critique on the fair Helen being concluded, the Queen desired to see the beautiful and hopeless Mariamne. The enchanter did not wait to be twice asked; but he did not choose to invoke a Princess who had worshipped at holy altars in the same manner as he had summoned the fair Pagan. It was then, by way of ceremony, that, turning four times to the east, three to the south, two to the west, and only once to the north, he uttered, with great suavity, in Hebrew-- "Lovely Mariamne, come! Though thou sleepest far away, Regal spirit! leave thy tomb! Let the splendours round thee play, Silken robe and diamond stone, Such as, on thy bridal-day, Flash'd from proud Judea's throne." Scarcely had he concluded, when the spouse of Herod made her appearance, and gravely advanced into the centre of the gallery, where she halted, as her predecessor had done. She was robed nearly like the high-priest of the Jews, except that instead of the Tiara, a veil, descending from the crown of the head, and slightly attached to the cincture, fell far behind her. Those graceful and flowing draperies threw over the whole figure of the lovely Hebrew an air of indescribable dignity. After having stopped for several minutes before the company, she pursued her way,--but without paying the slightest parting compliment to the haughty Elizabeth. "Is it possible," said the Queen, before she had well disappeared--"is it possible that Mariamne was such a figure as that?--such a tall, pale, meagre, melancholy-looking affair, to have passed for a beauty through so many centuries!" "By my honour," quoth Essex, "had I been in Herod's place, I should never have been angry at her keeping her distance." "Yet I perceived," said Sydney, "a certain touching languor in the countenance,--an air of dignified simplicity." Her Majesty looked grave. "Fye, fye," returned Essex, "it was haughtiness; her manner is full of presumption,--ay, and even her height." The Queen having approved of Essex's decision, on her own part condemned the Princess for her aversion to her spouse, which, though the world alleged to have been caused by his being the cut-throat of her family, she saw nothing to justify, whatever a husband might be. A wife was a wife; and Herod had done quite right in cutting off the heads of the offenders. Faustus, who affected universal knowledge, assured her Majesty that all the historians were in error on that point; for he had had it himself from a living witness, that the true cause of Herod's vengeance was his spiteful old-maid of a sister--Salome's overhearing Mariamne, one day at prayers, beg of Heaven to rid her of her worthless husband.