Before the altar in the temple, just as Assad is about to pronounce
the words which are to bind him to Sulamith, she confronts him
again, on the specious pretext that she brings gifts for the bride.
Assad again addresses her. Again he is denied. Delirium seizes upon
his brain; he loudly proclaims the Queen as the goddess of his
devotion. The people are panic-stricken at the sacrilege and rush
from the temple; the priests cry anathema; Sulamith bemoans her
fate; Solomon essays words of comfort; the High Priest intercedes
with heaven; the soldiery, led by Baal-Hanan, overseer of the
palace, enter to lead the profaner to death. Now Solomon claims the
right to fix his punishment. The Queen, fearful that her prey may
escape her, begs his life as a boon, but Solomon rejects her
appeal; Assad must work out his salvation by overcoming temptation
and mastering his wicked passion. Sulamith approaches amid the
wailings of her companions. She is about to enter a retreat on the
edge of the Syrian desert, but she, too, prays for the life of
Assad. Solomon, in a prophetic ecstasy, foretells Assad's
deliverance from sin and in a vision sees a meeting between him and
his pure love under a palm tree in the desert. Assad is banished to
the sandy waste; there a simoom sweeps down upon him; he falls at
the foot of a lonely palm to die, after calling on Sulamith with
his fleeting breath. She comes with her wailing maidens, sees the
fulfilment of Solomon's prophecy, and Assad dies in her arms. "Thy
beloved is thine, in love's eternal realm," sing the maidens, while
a mirage shows the wicked Queen, with her caravan of camels and
elephants, returning to her home.

The parallel between this story and the immeasurably more poetical
and beautiful one of "Tannhauser" is apparent to half an eye.
Sulamith is Elizabeth, the Queen is Venus, Assad is Tannhauser,