By what was in former times a monumental staircase, but was now only dust, she arrived at the Temple of the Sun. Erected out of blocks of marble, it rose still great on the field of desolation and ruins. The gigantic walls of the sacred enclosure were crumbling in all parts, exposing the immense square court 250 metres in length which surrounded the sanctuary, to-day a mosque. As veritable butchers of art, the Arabs had slashed the sanctuary to dig there their dens, and the pure line of columns appeared to weep over this invasion of executioners. At her house the excited people left her. Bruce and Meryon, who retained a strong academic tincture, had abundant leisure during the quiet hours of that evening to recall their classical souvenirs. Zenobia and Hester Stanhope! What a vast horizon opens to all the meditations of history and philosophy! What a comparison to make between the former sovereign of Palmyra and her whom the Bedouins were already proclaiming their queen! Do they not yield to the ready temptation to compare. What remained of Zenobia? A name on antique medals, a profile spoiled on old coins. She was beautiful, it appears, and the Eastern pearl was not more dazzling than her teeth. Her eyes were charming and full of fire and her figure majestic. The singularity of her dress answered to that of her character. She wore on her head a helmet surmounted by a ram's head and a flowing plume, and on her robe a bull's head of brass, for often she fought with the soldiers, her arms bare and a sword in her hand, and supported on horseback the most prolonged fatigue. Firmness in command, courage in reverses, loftiness of sentiments, diligence in business, dissimulation in politics, audacity without restraint, ambition without limits, such were, according to Trebellius Pollion, the defects and the accomplishments of this extraordinary woman. Would one not say that he who traced this portrait had known Hester Stanhope? She added only to the outline of Zenobia six feet of height, her haughty features, her clear complexion and Pitt's love of orating. But it is not sufficient to have a masculine costume to acquire virility and audacity, and it seems that under the cuirass embellished with jewels, as under the koumbaz and the machllah, the two strangers, though divided by sixteen centuries, in courage and ambition are sisters. Sisters also in their religious aspirations as numerous as different, in the eclecticism of their doctrines and their dogmas. They both belonged to that class of restless minds which is ever ready to welcome new and subversive philosophical theories, prompt to understand and to assimilate, prompt also to oblivion and to change.