[6] Apuleius says, "a silken mantle."--Trans.
[7] Apuleius says, "strung with knuckle-bones of sheep."--Trans.
[8] This scene, like certain paintings in the Naples museum, is all suited for public exhibition.--Trans.
[9] Readers will recollect the lines in Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_:
"Beneath Aricia's trees, Those trees in whose dim shadow A ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And must himself be slain."
(_He flies beneath him, outstretched like a swimmer; his vast-spreading wings, wholly concealing him, seem like one huge cloud._)
ANTHONY. "Whither do I go? But a little while ago I beheld in a glimpse the form of the Accurst. Nay!--'tis a cloud that upbears me! Perhaps I am dead, and am ascending to God....
"How freely I respire. The immaculate air seems to vivify my soul. No sense of weight!--no more suffering.
"Far below me the lightning breaks,--the horizon broadens, widens,--the rivers cross each other. That blond-bright spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean!
"And other oceans appear!--vast regions of which I knew nothing! There are the countries of the blacks, which seem to smoke like brasiers!--then is the zone of snows always made dim by fog! Would I might behold those mountains where the sun, each evening, sinks to rest!"
THE DEVIL. "The sun never sinks to rest; the sun never rests!"
(_Anthony is not surprised at this voice. It seems to him an echo of his own thought--a response made by his own memory._
_Meanwhile the earth gradually assumes the shape of a ball; and he beholds it in the midst of the azure, turning upon its poles, and revolving with the sun._)
THE DEVIL. "So it does not form the centre of the universe! Pride of man! humiliate thyself!"
ANTHONY. "Now I can scarcely distinguish it. It mingles confusedly with other glowing worlds. The firmament itself is but one tissue of stars."
"No sound!--not even the hoarse cry of eagles! Nothing? I listen for the harmony of the spheres."
THE DEVIL. "Thou wilt not hear them! Nor wilt thou behold the antichtonus of Plato,--or the central furnace of Philolaüs,--or the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens of the Jews, with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"
ANTHONY. "Yet from below the vault seemed solid as a wall!--on the contrary I penetrate it, I lose myself in it!"