At a sign from Herod, the menial carrying the dish now approached the daughter of Herodias, 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 a kind of snorting laugh.
Paulus rose slowly and deliberately from his place near the tetrarch, at whom he steadily looked.
"This, then," said he, "is the entertainment to which you have invited a Roman legatus. You are vexed, people say, that Pilate, the Roman governor of this city, could not honor your birthday by his presence in your palace. Pilate's local authority is of course greater than mine, for I have none at all; but his real, permanent rank, and your own real, permanent importance, are contemptible by the side of those which a Roman soldier of such a family as the Æmilian has gained on the field of battle; and it was a high honor to yourself to succeed in bringing me hither. And now, while disgracing your own house, you have insulted your guests. What is the name of the man you have murdered because a woman dances like a goat? What is his name?"
The tetrarch, astonished and over-awed, replied with a bewildered look:
"What authority to rebuke me, because I took my brother's wife, had John?"
"John who?" asked Paulus, who from the outset had been struck by the name.
"He who was styled John the Baptist," said the tetrarch.
The words of another John rang in Paulus's memory; and he exclaimed:
"What! John the Baptist? John the Baptist, yea, and more than a prophet—John the Angel of God! Is this he whom you have slain?"
"What had he to say to my marriage?" answered Herod, through whose purple face a livid under-color was penetrating to the surface.