"O Paris, fatal was the hour,
When, victim to the blind god's power,
Within your native walks you bore
That firebrand from a foreign shore;
Who--ah, so little worth the strife!--
Was fit for nothing, but a wife."

"'Od's my life now," said her Majesty, "but I think she looks fitter for
anything else, Sydney!--My Lord of Essex, how think you?"

"As your Majesty does," returned he; "there is a meaning in that eye."

"And a minute past they said there was none," thought Faustus.

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 man