I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left, and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn; however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue. On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws. The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the left: ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END. Chapter 5.XXXVIII. Of the Temple's admirable pavement. When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla's time, or the pavement of the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate, streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and yellowish veins. And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.