Hundreds of images of the gods, in gold, silver, and wood--many in the
latter material being larger than life; canopies, vestments, furniture,
utensils, all of ancient Pagan form, were heaped together, without order
or arrangement, on the floor, to a height of full fifteen feet.
There was something at once hideous and grotesque in the appearance of
the pile. The monstrous figures of the idols, with their rude carved
draperies and symbolic weapons, lay in every wild variety of position,
and presented every startling eccentricity of line, more especially
towards the higher portions of the mass, where they had evidently been
flung up from the ground by the hand that had raised the structure.
The draperies mixed among the images and the furniture were here coiled
serpent-like around them, and there hung down towards the ground, waving
slow and solemn in the breezes that wound through the temple doorway.
The smaller objects of gold and silver, scattered irregularly over the
mass, shone out from it like gleaming eyes; while the pile itself, seen
in such a place under a dusky light, looked like some vast, misshapen
monster--the gloomy embodiment of the bloodiest superstitions of
Paganism, the growth of damp airs and teeming ruin, of shadow and
darkness, of accursed and infected solitude!
Even in its position, as well as in the objects of which it was
composed, the pile wore an ominous and startling aspect; its crooked
outline, expanding towards the top, was bent over fearfully in the
direction of the doorway; it seemed as if a single hand might sway it in
its uncertain balance, and hurl it instantly in one solid mass to the
floor.
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