mous, though I did not remember it myself, and for some
miles round the dead were pretty frequent, making the immediate approach
to the cave a matter for care, if the foot was to be saved from
pollution. It is clear that there had been an iron gate across the
entrance, that within this a wall had been built across, shutting in I
do not know how many, perhaps one or two, perhaps hundreds: and both
gate and wall had been stormed and broken down, for there still were the
sledges and rocks which, without doubt, had done it. I had a lamp, and
at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it
useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a
passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the
roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like
an inverted forest of children's toy-trees. I then came to a round hole,
apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic
formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and
festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their
myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large
numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre
of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with
hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time
widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size,
from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip,
drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying
feet, in which the only business is to drip. Where stalactite meets
stalagmite there are pillars: where stalactite meets stalactite in
fissures long or short there are elegances, flimsy draperies, delicate
fantasies; there were also pools of water in which hung heads and feet,
and there were vacant spots at outlying spaces, where the arched roof,
which continually heightened itself, was reflected in the chill gleam of
the floor. Suddenly, the roof came down, the floor went up, and they
seemed to meet before me; but looking, I found a low opening, through
which, drawing myself on the belly over slime for some yards in
repulsive proximity to dead personalities, I came out upon a floor of
sand and pebbles under a long dry tunnel, arched and narrow, grim and
dull, without stalactites, suggestive of monks, and catacomb-vaults, and
the route to the grave; and here the d