“What an impious man you are!” murmured Matho, following him nevertheless.

The apartment which they entered had nothing in it but a black painting representing another woman.  Her legs reached to the top of the wall, and her body filled the entire ceiling; a huge egg hung by a thread from her navel, and she fell head downwards upon the other wall, reaching as far as the level of the pavement, which was touched by her pointed fingers.

They drew a hanging aside, in order to go on further; but the wind blew and the light went out.

Then they wandered about, lost in the complications of the architecture.  Suddenly they felt something strangely soft beneath their feet.  Sparks crackled and leaped; they were walking in fire.  Spendius touched the ground and perceived that it was carefully carpeted with lynx skins; then it seemed to them that a big cord, wet, cold, and viscous, was gliding between their legs.  Through some fissures cut in the wall there fell thin white rays, and they advanced by this uncertain light.  At last they distinguished a large black serpent.  It darted quickly away and disappeared.

“Let us fly!” exclaimed Matho.  “It is she!  I feel her; she is coming.”

“No, no,” replied Spendius, “the temple is empty.”

Then a dazzling light made them lower their eyes.  Next they perceived all around them an infinite number of beasts, lean, panting, with bristling claws, and mingled together one above another in a mysterious and terrifying confusion.  There were serpents with feet, and bulls with wings, fishes with human heads were devouring fruit, flowers were blooming in the jaws of crocodiles, and elephants with uplifted trunks were sailing proudly through the azure like eagles.  Their incomplete or multiplied limbs were distended with terrible exertion.  As they thrust out their tongues they looked as though they would fain give forth their souls; and every shape was to be found among them as if the germ-receptacle had been suddenly hatched and had burst, emptying itself upon the walls of the hall.

Round the latter were twelve globes of blue crystal, supported by monsters resembling tigers.  Their eyeballs were starting out of their heads like those of snails, with their dumpy loins bent they were turning round towards the background where the supreme Rabbet, the Omnifecund, the last invented, shone splendid in a chariot of ivory.

She was covered with scales, feathers, flowers, and birds as high as the waist.  For earrings she had silver cymbals, which flapped against her cheeks.  Her large fixed eyes gazed upon you, and a luminous stone, set in an obscene symbol on her brow, lighted the whole hall by its reflection in red copper mirrors above the door.

Matho stood a step forward; but a flag stone yielded beneath his heels and immediately the spheres began to revolve and the monsters to roar; music rose melodious and pealing, like the harmony of the planets; the tumultuous soul of Tanith was poured streaming forth.  She was about to arise, as lofty as the hall and with open arms.  Suddenly the monsters closed their jaws and the crystal globes revolved no more.