ancient but no less immoral creatures of modern fancy, like
Violetta, Manon Lescaut, Zaza, and Louise, we might make a pretty
complete list of representatives of the female type in which modern
dramatists and composers seem to think the interest of humanity
centres.

When Massenet's "Herodiade" was announced as the first opera to be
given at the Manhattan Opera House in New York for the season of
1909-1910 it looked to some observers as if the dominant note of
the year was to be sounded by the Scarlet Woman; but the
representation brought a revelation and a surprise. The names of
the principal characters were those which for a few years had been
filling the lyric theatres of Germany with a moral stench; but
their bearers in Massenet's opera did little or nothing that was
especially shocking to good taste or proper morals. Herod was a
love-sick man of lust, who gazed with longing eyes upon the
physical charms of Salome and pleaded for her smiles like any
sentimental milksop; but he did not offer her Capernaum for a
dance. Salome may have known how, but she did not dance for either
half a kingdom or the whole of a man's head. Instead, though there
were intimations that her reputation was not all that a good
maiden's ought to be, she sang pious hosannahs and waved a palm
branch conspicuously in honor of the prophet at whose head she had
bowled herself in the desert, the public streets, and king's
palaces. At the end she killed herself when she found that the
vengeful passion of Herodias and the jealous hatred of Herod had
compassed the death of the saintly man whom she had loved. Herodias
was a wicked woman, no doubt, for John the Baptist denounced her
publicly as a Jezebel, but her jealousy of Salome had reached a
point beyond her control before she learned that her rival was her