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Updated: June 24, 2025
In return for his bounty the high priest bestowed on the sovereign a most beautiful dancer fifteen years of age, who seemed greatly delighted with her fortune. When the pharaoh found himself in the hall of "repose" he sat on the throne, and his substitute in religion, Sem, to the sound of music and amid the smoke of censers, entered the sanctuary to bring forth the divinity.
All about the area are scattered statues, altars, vases of flowers, censers, candelabra, and other accessories. But the eye is chiefly attracted by the three altars in the foreground, with the three coloured statues behind them, of Buddha, seated, as emblematic of Past, Present, and Future.
The rich, the Ancients, the women, the whole multitude, thronged behind the priests and on the terraces of the houses. The large painted stars revolved no longer; the tabernacles were set upon the ground; and the fumes from the censers ascended perpendicularly, spreading their bluish branches through the azure like gigantic trees. Many fainted; others became inert and petrified in their ecstasy.
But at the close there was a procession which is worth considerable description. Six men with censers of silver lined up before the high altar, and stood there, slowly swinging the fragrant bowls at the end of their long chains. The music died down. One could hear the rhythmical, faint clangour of the metal.
And behind the couch, with drawn sword, stood Brennus, in splendid armour and winged helm of gold; and by him others I among them in garments richly worked, and knew that I was indeed a slave! On the high poop also burned censers filled with costliest incense, of which the fragrant steam hung in little clouds about our wake."
His days were spent in inspecting the censers, the gold vases, the tongs, the rakes for the ashes of the altar, and all the robes of the statues down to the bronze bodkin that served to curl the hair of an old Tanith in the third aedicule near the emerald vine.
To see those dark and mighty men, inured to all of sin and crime, reckless both of man and God, yet now with heads devoutly bent, clasped hands, and downcast eyes, following the long black coffin of their common ancestor, to the place where they must join him when their sum of ill was done; and to see the feeble priest chanting, over the dead form, words the living would have laughed at, sprinkling with his little broom drops that could not purify; while the children, robed in white, swung their smoking censers slowly over the cold and twilight grave; and after seeing all, to ask, with a shudder unexpressed, 'Is this the end that God intended for a man so proud and strong?
Beneath its smoky roof-tree was a pervading aroma; near the centre of that aroma, a table dim with wefts of incense; at the innermost centre of that aroma and that incense, and whence those visible and viewless fountains streamed, was their source, a Dish of Pork-and-Beans. Topmostly this. There were lesser viands, buttresses to this towering triumph. Minor smokes from minor censers.
That god came slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to top; then, of a sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a gap of the valley walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground before him, and censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles, releasing their perfumed steam.
The singing voices came nearer and nearer I saw the priests, the acolytes, the swinging gold censers heavy with fragrance, the flaring candles, the snowy veils of children and girls and then all suddenly the picturesque beauty of the scene danced before my eyes in a whirling blur of brilliancy and color from which looked forth one face!
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