These girls brought silver bowls containing wine mixed with honey, and they brought pomegranates and eggs and barleycorn, and triangular red-colored loaves, whereon they sprinkled sweet-smelling little seeds with formal gestures. Then Anaïtis and Jurgen broke their fast, eating together while the four girls served them. "And now," says Jurgen, "and now, my dear, I would suggest that we enter into the pursuit of those curious pleasures of which you were telling me." "I am very willing," responded Anaïtis, "since there is no one of these pleasures but is purchased by some diversion of man's nature. Yet first, as I need hardly inform you, there is a ceremonial to be observed." "And what, pray, is this ceremonial?" "Why, we call it the Breaking of the Veil." And Queen Anaïtis explained what they must do. "Well," says Jurgen, "I am willing to taste any drink once." So Anaïtis led Jurgen into a sort of chapel, adorned with very unchurchlike paintings. There were four shrines, dedicated severally to St. Cosmo, to St. Damianus, to St. Guignole of Brest, and to St. Foutin de Varailles. In this chapel were a hooded man, clothed in long garments that were striped with white and yellow, and two naked children, both girls. One of the children carried a censer: the other held in one hand a vividly blue pitcher half filled with water, and in her left hand a cellar of salt. First of all, the hooded man made Jurgen ready. "Behold the lance," said the hooded man, "which must serve you in this adventure." "I accept the adventure," Jurgen replied, "because I believe the weapon to be trustworthy." Said the hooded man: "So be it! but as you are, so once was I." Meanwhile Duke Jurgen held the lance erect, shaking it with his right hand. This lance was large, and the tip of it was red with blood. "Behold," said Jurgen, "I am a man born of a woman incomprehensibly. Now I, who am miraculous, am found worthy to perform a miracle, and to create that which I may not comprehend." Anaïtis took salt and water from the child, and mingled these. "Let the salt of earth enable the thin fluid to assume the virtue of the teeming sea!" Then, kneeling, she touched the lance, and began to stroke it lovingly. To Jurgen she said: "Now may you be fervent of soul and body! May the endless Serpent be your crown, and the fertile flame of the sun your strength!" Said the hooded man, again: "So be it!" His voice was high and bleating, because of that which had been done to him. "That therefore which we cannot understand we also invoke," said Jurgen. "By the power of the lifted lance"--and now with his left hand he took the hand of Anaïtis,--"I, being a man born of a woman incomprehensibly, now seize upon that which alone I desire with my whole being. I lead you toward the east. I upraise you above the earth and all the things of earth."