ively that even she began to hope
for some good effect from these incomprehensible formulas; and at the
same time she remembered that her old slave-woman Dido, who worshiped
many gods, wore round her neck, besides a variety of heathen amulets, a
little cross which had been given her by a Christian woman. To her
question why she, a heathen, wore this about her, the old woman replied,
"You can never tell what may help you some day." So perhaps these
exorcisms might not be without some effect on her lover, particularly as
the God of the Christians must be powerful and good.

She herself strove to uplift her soul in prayer to the manes of her lost
mother; but the scene going on around her in the vestibule distracted her
mind with horror. Men, young and old, were slashing themselves with
vehement scourgings on their backs. One white-haired old man, indeed,
handed his whip of hippopotamus-hide to a stalwart lad whose shoulders
were streaming with blood, and begged him as a brother, as fervently as
though it were the greatest favor, to let him feel the lash. But the
younger man refused, and she saw the weak old fellow trying to apply it
to his own back.

All this was quite beyond her comprehension, and struck her as,
disgusting; and how haggard and hideous were the limbs of these people
who thus sinned against their own bodies--the noble temples of the Divine
Spirit!

When, a few minutes later, the litter was borne out of the church again,
the sun had triumphed over the mists and was rising with blinding
splendor in the cloudless sky. Everything was bathed in light; but the
dreadful sight of the penitents had cast a gloom over the clear gladness
she had been so full of but just now. It was with a sense of oppression
that she took leave of the deaconess, who left her with cheerful
contentment in the street of Hermes, and followed the litter to the open
square in front of the Serapeum.

Here every thought of gloom vanished from her mind as at the touch of a
magician, for before her stood the vast Temple of Serapis, founded, as it
were, for eternity, on a substructure of rock and closely fitted masonry,
the noblest building on earth of any dedicated to the gods. The great
cupola rose to the blue sky as though it fain would greet the sister
vault above with its own splendor, and the copper-plating which covered
it shone as dazzling as a second sun. From the wide front of the temple,
every being to whom the prayers and worship