He paused to consider his next movements. In a stationary position, the
damp coldness of the atmosphere was almost insupportable, but he
attained a great advantage by his present stillness: he could listen
undisturbed by the noises made by the bricks which crumbled from under
him, if he advanced.
Ere long, he heard a thin, winding, long-drawn sound, now louder, now
softer; now approaching, now retreating; now verging towards shrillness,
now quickly returning to a faint, gentle swell. Suddenly this strange
unearthly music was interrupted by a succession of long, deep, rolling
sounds, which travelled grandly about the fissures above, like prisoned
thunderbolts striving to escape. Utterly ignorant that the first of
these noises was occasioned by the night wind winding through the rents
in the brick of the outer wall beyond him; and the second, by the echoes
produced in the irregular cavities above, by the footfall of the
sentries overhead--roused by the influence of the place, and the mystery
of his employment, to a pitch of fanatic exaltation, which for the
moment absolutely unsteadied his reason--filled with the frantic
enthusiasm of his designs, and the fearful legends of invisible beings
and worlds which made the foundation of his worship, Ulpius conceived,
as he listened to the sounds around and above, that the gods of
antiquity were now in viewless congregation hovering about him, and
calling to him in unearthly voices and in an unknown tongue, to proceed
upon his daring enterprise, in the full assurance of its near and
glorious success.
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