"As to the living beings that prefigured Her on earth, instances abound; the greater part of the famous women of the Old Testament are but anticipatory images of Her graces. Sarah, to whom an angel foretells the birth of a son who is himself a type of the Son; Miriam, the sister of Moses, who, by saving her brother from the river, freed the Jews; Jephthah's daughter; Deborah, the prophetess; Jael, who, like the Virgin, was called Blessed among women; Hannah, the mother of Samuel, whose song of praise seems like a forecast of the _Magnificat_; Jehosheba preserving Joash from the fury of Athaliah, as the Virgin afterwards saved Jesus from the wrath of Herod; Ruth personifying both the contemplative and the active life; Rebecca, Rachel, Abigail, Solomon's mother, the mother of the Maccabees, who witnessed the death of her sons; and again those whose names are inscribed under these arches; Judith and Esther, the first representative of courageous chastity, and the second of mercy and justice." "However, to avoid confusion, we will follow the statues in order as they stand in this porch, three on each side. "On the left Balaam, the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. "On the right, Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith or Esther, and Joseph." "Balaam is this statue of a worthy peasant, smug and friendly, smiling in his beard, a stick in his hand and a hat like a pie-dish; and the Queen of Sheba, the woman who bends forward a little, looking as if she were cross-questioning and arguing over some deed she condemned. But what have these two persons to do with the life of the Virgin?" "Balaam is a type of the Messiah. It was he who prophesied that a star should come out of Jacob and a sceptre rise out of Israel. As to the Queen of Sheba, according to the teaching of the Fathers, she is an image of the Church; Solomon's spouse, as the Church is the spouse of Christ." "Well, well," muttered Durtal to himself. "The thirteenth century could not give a fitting presentment of that queen, whom we picture to ourselves as dressed with foolish magnificence, rocking on a camel across the desert at the head of a caravan under the blazing sky across the furnace of sand. Her charms have appealed to writers, and not the smallest of them; Flaubert for one--this Queen Balkis, Mekida or Nicaule. But in the '_Tentation de Saint Antoine_' she has failed to assume any form but that of a puerile and flimsy creature, a skipping and lisping puppet. In fact, no one but Gustave Moreau, the painter of Salome, could represent the woman, a virgin and a courtesan, a casuist and a coquette. He only could give life, under the flowered panoply of dress and the blazing gorget of jewels, to the crowned foreign face, with its smile as of an artless sphinx, come from so far to ask enigmas. Such a woman is too complicated for the spirit and the ingenuous art of the Middle Ages.