f his torch into the mouth
of an amphora standing erect in a corner, and began to unpack the load
they had brought on a mule. It looked like the preparation for a feast:
there were loaves of bread, fruit, a flask of choice wine; and Domenico,
for a moment, thought the old man mad. But his feelings changed when
Filarete produced a set of silver lamps, and bade him trim and light
them, placing them on the ledges alongside of the cinerary urns; and
when he lit some strange incense and filled the place with its smoke.
Despite the many descriptions of ancient sacrifices with which the
humanist had entertained him, Domenico had brought a vague notion of a
raising of devils, and felt relieved at the absence of brimstone fumes,
and of the magic books that accompanied them.

Although more passionately longing--he knew not, he dared not tell
himself for what--Domenico did not come with the curious exaltation of
spirits of his companion, all whose antiquarian lore had gone to his
head, and who really imagined himself to be a genuine Pagan engaged in
Pagan rites. For Filarete the ceremony was everything; for Domenico it
was merely a means, a sort of sacrilegious juggling, into which he had
not inquired more particularly, which was to give him the object of his
wishes at the price of great peril to his soul. But when the subterranean
chamber was filled with a cloud of incense, through which, in the dim
yellow light of the lamp, the naked gods and goddesses on the vault, the
satyrs and nymphs, the Tritons and Bacchantes seemed to float in and out
of sight, a feeling of awe, of an unknown kind of reverence and rapture,
began to fill his soul, and his eyes became fixed on the lid of the
carved sarcophagus--vague images of Christian resurrections mingling
with his hopes--Would the god appear?

Filarete, meanwhile, had enveloped his head in a long linen veil,
and, after washing his hands thrice in a golden basin brought for the
purpose, he placed some faggots on the sarcophagus, lit them, and
throwing grains of incense and of salt alternately into the flames,
began to chant in an unknown tongue, which Domenico guessed to be Greek.
Then beckoning to the painter, who was kneeling, as at church, in a
corner, he bade him unpack a basket matted over with leaves, whose
movements and sounds had puzzled Domenico as he carried it down. In
great surprise, and with a vague sense of he knew not what, he handed
its contents to Filarete. It was a mis