Scarcely had these words been read when the mountain trembled, and the rock yawned and disclosed within it a staircase of polished marble, down which they descended.  At the bottom they found their way impeded by a huge portal of ebony, which, opening at the giaour’s command, revealed to them a place which, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so spacious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain.  In the midst of this immense hall a vast multitude was incessantly passing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without once regarding anything about them.  They had all the livid paleness of death; their eyes, deep-sunk in their sockets, resembled those phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment.  Some stalked slowly along, absorbed in profound reverie; some, shrieking with agony, ran furiously about like tigers wounded with poisonous arrows; whilst others, grinding their teeth in rage, foamed along, more frantic than the wildest maniacs.  They all avoided each other, and, though surrounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wandered at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert no foot had trodden.

Vathek and Nouronihar, frozen with terror at a sight so baleful, demanded of the giaour what these appearances might mean, and why these ambulating spectres never withdrew their hands from their hearts.

“Perplex not yourselves,” replied he, bluntly, “with so much at once; you will soon be acquainted with all.  Let us haste and present you to Eblis.”

They continued their way through the multitude, and after some time entered a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of leopards and filled with an infinity of elders with streaming beards and Afrits in complete armour, all of whom had prostrated themselves before the ascent of a lofty eminence, on the top of which, upon a globe of fire, sat the formidable Eblis.  He received Vathek’s and Nouronihar’s homage, and invited them to enjoy whatever the palace afforded—­the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans and their bickering sabres and those talismans which compel the Dives to open the subterranean expanses of the mountain of Kaf.

The giaour then conducted them to a hall of great extent, covered with a lofty dome, round which appeared fifty portals of bronze, secured with as many fastenings of iron.  A funereal gloom prevailed over the whole scene.  Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the fleshless forms of pre-Adamite kings, who had been monarchs of the whole earth; they still possessed enough of life to be conscious of their deplorable condition; their eyes retained a melancholy motion; they regarded each other with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless on his heart.  Soliman Ben Daoud, the most eminent of them, told Vathek the story of his great state, of his worship of fire and the hosts of the sky, and of heaven’s vengeance upon him.  “I