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of his own conception of the halls of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set out and rose to an exalted solemnity. Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury things new and old, but everything which passes through the alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately prince.[67] To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours, gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct and definite pattern around the three central personages, the caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_ leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with huma
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