aged eyes do see Him now, far, far off in the rising mist of unformed future things!—­the Cross—­ the Cross, on which His Man’s pure Life dissolves itself in glory, stretches above me in spreading beams of light! ...  Ah! ’tis a glittering pathway in the skies whereon men and the angels meet and know each other!  He is the strong and perfect Spirit, that shall break loose from Death and declare the insignificance of the Grave,—­He is the lingering Star in the East that shall rise and lighten all spiritual darkness—­the unknown, unnamed Redeemer of the World, ... the Man-God Saviour that shall come?”

“Shall come?” cried Theos, suddenly roused to the utmost pitch of frenzied excitement, and pronouncing each word with loud and involuntary vehemence ...  “Nay! ... for He has come!  He died for us, and rose again from the dead more than eighteen hundred years ago!”

* * * * *

A frightful silence followed,—­a breathless cessation of even the faintest quiver of sound.  The mighty mass of people, apparently moved by one accord, turned with swift, stealthy noiselessness toward the audacious speaker, ... thousands of glittering eyes were fixed upon him in solemnly inquiring wonderment, while he himself, now altogether dismayed at the effect of his own rash utterance, thought he had never experienced a more awful moment!  For it was as though all the skeletons he had lately seen in the Passage of the Tombs had suddenly clothed themselves with spectral flesh and hair and the shadowy garments of men, and had advanced into broad daylight to surround him in their terrible lifeless ranks, and wrench from him the secret of an after-existence concerning which they were ignorant!

How ghostly and drear seemed that dense crowd in this new light of his delirious fancy!  A clammy dew broke out on his forehead,—­he saw the blue skies, the huge buildings in the Square, the Obelisk, the fountains, the trees, all whirling round him in a wild dance of the dizziest distraction, ... when Sah-luma’s rich voice close to his ear recalled his wandering senses: 

“Why, man, art thou drunk or mad?” and the Laureate’s face expressed a kind of sarcastic astonishment,—­“What a fool thou hast made of thyself, good comrade! ...  By my soul, how shall thy condition be explained to these open-mouthed starers below!  See how they gape upon thee! ... thou art most assuredly a noticeable spectacle! ... and yon maniac Prophet doth evidently judge thee as one of his craft, a fellow professional howler of marvels, else he would scarcely deign to fix his eyes so obstinately on thy countenance!  Nay, verily thou dost outrival him in the strangeness of thy language! ...  What moved thee to such frenzied utterance?  Surely thou hast a stroke of the sun!—­thy words were most absolutely devoid of reason! ... as senseless as the jabber of an idiot to his own shadow on the wall!”