m down along the edge of the
curtain to keep it down. Then the men and women sat down again at the
tables.

And I said to God, "Will those stones keep it down?"

God said, "What think you?"

I said, "If the wind blew?"

God said, "If the wind blew?"

And the feast went on.

And suddenly I cried to God, "If one should rise among them, even of
themselves, and start up from the table and should cast away his
cup, and cry, 'My brothers and my sisters, stay! what is it that we
drink?'--and with his sword should cut in two the curtain, and holding
wide the fragments, cry, 'Brothers, sisters, see! it is not wine, not
wine! not wine! My brothers, oh, my sisters!' and he should overturn
the--"

God said, "Be still!--, see there."

I looked: before the banquet-house, among the grass, I saw a row of
mounds, flowers covered them, and gilded marble stood at their heads. I
asked God what they were.

He answered, "They are the graves of those who rose up at the feast and
cried."

And I asked God how they came there.

He said, "The men of the banquet-house rose and cast them down
backwards."

I said, "Who buried them?"

God said, "The men who cast them down."

I said, "How came it that they threw them down, and then set marble over
them?"

God said, "Because the bones cried out, they covered them."

And among the grass and weeds I saw an unburied body lying; and I asked
God why it was.

God said, "Because it was thrown down only yesterday. In a little while,
when the flesh shall have fallen from its bones, they will bury it also,
and plant flowers over it."

And still the feast went on.

Men and women sat at the tables quaffing great bowls. Some rose, and
threw their arms about each other, and danced and sang. They pledged
each other in the wine, and kissed each other's blood-red lips.

Higher and higher grew the revels.

Men, when they had drunk till they could no longer, threw what was left
in their glasses up to the roof, and let it fall back in cascades. Women
dyed their children's garments in the wine, and fed them on it till
their tiny mouths were red. Sometimes, as the dancers whirled, they
overturned a vessel, and their garments were bespattered. Children sat
upon the floor with great bowls of wine, and swam rose-leaves on it, for
boats. They put their hands in the wine and blew large red bubbles.

And higher and higher grew the revels, and wilder the dancing, and
louder and louder the singing. B