* * * * * A frightful silence followed,--a breathless cessation of even the faintest quiver of sound. The mighty mass of people, apparently moved by one accord, turned with swift, stealthy noiselessness toward the audacious speaker, ... thousands of glittering eyes were fixed upon him in solemnly inquiring wonderment, while he himself, now altogether dismayed at the effect of his own rash utterance, thought he had never experienced a more awful moment! For it was as though all the skeletons he had lately seen in the Passage of the Tombs had suddenly clothed themselves with spectral flesh and hair and the shadowy garments of men, and had advanced into broad daylight to surround him in their terrible lifeless ranks, and wrench from him the secret of an after-existence concerning which THEY were ignorant! How ghostly and drear seemed that dense crowd in this new light of his delirious fancy! A clammy dew broke out on his forehead,--he saw the blue skies, the huge buildings in the Square, the Obelisk, the fountains, the trees, all whirling round him in a wild dance of the dizziest distraction, ... when Sah-luma's rich voice close to his ear recalled his wandering senses: "Why, man, art thou drunk or mad?" and the Laureate's face expressed a kind of sarcastic astonishment,--"What a fool thou hast made of thyself, good comrade! ... By my soul, how shall thy condition be explained to these open-mouthed starers below! See how they gape upon thee! ... thou art most assuredly a noticeable spectacle! ... and yon maniac Prophet doth evidently judge thee as one of his craft, a fellow professional howler of marvels, else he would scarcely deign to fix his eyes so obstinately on thy countenance! Nay, verily thou dost outrival him in the strangeness of thy language! ... What moved thee to such frenzied utterance? Surely thou hast a stroke of the sun!--thy words were most absolutely devoid of reason! ... as senseless as the jabber of an idiot to his own shadow on the wall!" Theos was mute,--he had no defense to offer. The crowd still stared upon him,--and his heart beat fast with a mingled sense of fear and pride--fear of his present surroundings,--pride that he had spoken out his conviction boldly, reckless of all consequences. And this pride was a most curious thing to analyze, because it did not so much consist in the fact of his having openly confessed his inward thought, as that he felt he had gained some special victory in thus ACKNOWLEDGING HIS BELIEF IN THE POSITIVE EXISTENCE OF THE "Saviour" who formed the subject of Khosrul's prophecy. Full of a singular sort of self-congratulation which yet had nothing to do with selfishness, he became so absorbed in his own reflections that he started like a man brusquely aroused from sleep when the Prophet's strong grave voice apostrophized him personally over the heads of the throng: