The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-06-21

VI E6SENGEh SUNDAY. JUNE
those which we moderns use, to express our in
fatuation for the CLEANS of prettiness whicl
are quenched almost as soon they are seen,
had repeatedly endeavored to attract his at
tentlon. She was royal she was On unrivalle'
dancer. Herod, who began to feel dull, beg
ged her to favor the company with q dance
Thereupon the daughter of Herodias looked
at Paulns, to whom her previous bland
1shments had been addressed On yaiI
Che was known to be unmarried), and heavet
fiery sigh. The mere noise of it ought t.
| have awakened his notice, and yet failed tt
accomplish even that small result Had i
| succeeded, he was exactly the person to have
regarded this woman with feeling akin t.
that which, some two-and-twenty years be
fore, she herself Cor was it Herodasi the,
age fast in the East) had walked in the bosom
OF his sister under the veranda in the bower Of
Crispus's inn, leading out of the fine old Latian
garden near the banks of the Liris.
She proceeded to execute her ballet, her pas
scal her dance of immortal shame and fatal
lnfamy. Cries of delight arose. The creature
grew frantic. The court of Herod fell into
Two parties. One party proclaimed the per-
1ormance perfection of elegance and spirit.
The other party said not a word, but chances
OF painful feeling passed among them. The
clamorous eulogists formed the large majority.
In the silent minority was numbered Paulus,
who never in his life had felt such grave dis
gust or snch settled indignation. He thought
of his pure and innocent Esther-alas, not his !
He thought that, had it been his sister Agatha
who TINA Ontraped III 81
pie of the tact social compact, he could almost
find it in his heart to relieve the earth Of her.
Thus bordering, his glance fell upon Herod
the tetrarch. The tetrarch seemed to have
become delirious. He was laughing, and cry
ing, and SOLDERING, and clapping his hands,
and rolling his head, and rocking his body on
the great state cushion under the canopy,
where he I" sat at table," While Paulus was
contemplating him in wonder and shame, the
wretched dancer came to an end of her bounds.
Indecency, scientifically accidental, had been
the one simple principle of the exhibition.
Herod called the practiced female before him,
and, in the hearing of several, bade her demand
from him any reward she pleased, and declared
upon oath he would grant her demand. Pau
lus heard the answer. After consulting apart
with her mother, she reapproached the tetrarch
and, with flushed face, said that she desired
the head of prisoner upon dish.
"What prisoner 7"
john" said she.
Paulus gazed at the miserable tetrarch,
" the quarter of king" hot from the height
of his rank as Roman general, but from the
still greater height which God had given him
as one of the first, one of the earliest of Euro
H.
was. But that any fellow-creature in prison,
not otherwise to be put to death, should have
his head hewn off and placed upon dish, be-
cause u woman had tossed her limbs to and fro
in style which pleased tetrarch while it
disgraced human society, appeared to Paulus
to be less than reasonable. What he had said,
the tetrarch had said upon oath.
A little confusion, slight murmuripg and
whispering ensued, but the courtly music soon
recommended. Paulus could not afterward
tell how long it was before the most awful
scene he had ever witnessed occurred.
A mental entered, bearing, large dish,
a freshly severed human head, bleeding at the
neck.
1t was not q jest them" said Paulus, in
low voice to his next neighbor 4 very old man,
whose face he remembered, but whose name
be had all the evening been trying in vain to
recall" it was not a base jest, dictated by
the hideous taste of worse than barbariansw
Truly" replied the aged man, these Jews
are worse than any barbarians ever saw W, and
have seen most of them"
Paulus recognized at these words the geo.
grapher Strabo, formerly his companion at tho
court of Augustus.
Al a sign from Herod, the mental carrying the
dish now approached the daughter of Hero
aias, and presented to her the bleeding and
sacred head. She, in turn, took the dish and
offered it to Herodias, who herself bore it out
Of the room with kind of snorting laugh.
Paulus rose slowly and deliberately from his |
place near the tetrarcb, at whom he steadily |
Ook ed