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One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the day's work is done to preserve the fulness of their heritage by the aspersion of alien things.
Just then a shadow appeared in the doorway, and Katherine looked down to see a shrinking little figure with pipestem legs standing on the top step. "Hello!" Katherine called gaily, from her airy perch. "Are you our neighbor from Avernus? Do you want anything?" she added, for the girl was swallowing nervously, and seemed to be on the verge of making a request.
Æneas, however, hastened at once to seek the temple of Apollo and the adjoining cave of the Cumæan Sibyl, the most famous of all the oracles of antiquity. The temple and cave were situated in a thick wood, closely adjoining the gloomy lake of Avernus, a black pool of unknown depth, hedged in by precipitous cliffs, and emitting gases so poisonous that no bird was able to fly over it in safety.
But he loves the clover field, and often his first move toward disaster is coming up from the pasture wall and digging a burrow in the midst of the clover where he soon has regular paths which take him from one rich clump to another. After that he sniffs the kitchen garden, and the descent to Avernus is easy. He moves in to the borders, finds a crevice or digs a hole, and revels.
The Sibyl replied, "The descent to Avernus is easy; the gate of Pluto stands open night and day; but to retrace one's steps and return to the upper air, that is the toil, that the difficulty. She instructed him to seek in the forest a tree on which grew a golden branch.
Those who climbed to the summit might indeed find beds of ashes and the jagged edge of a huge basin or gulf; the houses and walls were built of dark- red and black material that once had flowed from the crater in boiling torrents: but these had long since cooled, and so long was it since a column of smoke had been seen to rise from the mountain top, that it only remained as a matter of tradition that this region was one of mysterious fire, and that the dark cool lake Avernus, near the mountain skirts, was the very entrance to the shadowy realms beneath, that were supposed to be inhabited by the spirits of the dead.
"The Jamaica ginger," asked Carmen's thin voice in a bewildered tone, "what shall I do with it? Shall I put it in the hot water bottle?" Katherine's feet suddenly struck the floor together, and with an explosive exclamation under her breath she sped over to Avernus and took matters in hand herself.
This was the origin of all that account of the dead in Homer. This was the idea that caused my friend Appius to frame his Necromancy; and this is how there got about that idea of the lake of Avernus, in my neighborhood, From whence the souls of undistinguish'd shape, Clad in thick shade, rush from the open gate Of Acheron, vain phantoms of the dead.
While the Baron was thus loyally doing his duty, his Baroness, being ignorant of the excellence of his purpose, and knowing only that he had deceived her in one matter, and that the descent to Avernus is easy, passed a number of very miserable days.
Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches' broth is strong enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino herself.
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