The twelve Priests picked up the palanquin and Forrester adjusted his
weight so they wouldn't find it too heavy. It was impossible to think in
the mass of noise and music that went on and on, as the Procession wound
uptown through the paths of Central Park, and the musicians banged and
scraped and blew and pounded and stroked and plucked, and the great Hymn
rose into the air, filling the entire city with the bawled chorus as
even the twelve Priests joined in, adding to the ear-splitting din:
"_Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
While his wine goes flowing on!_"
Forrester had always been disturbed by what he thought might have been a
double meaning in that last line, but it didn't disturb him now. Nothing
seemed to disturb him as the Procession wound on, and he was laughing
uproariously and winking and nodding at his worshippers as they sang and
played all around him, and the hours went by. Halfway there, he fished
in the air and brought down the small golden disks with the picture of
Dionysus on them that were a regular feature of the Processional, and
flung them happily into the crowd ahead.
Only one was allowed per person, so there was not much scrambling, but
some of the coins pattered down on the various instruments, and one
landed in the old gentleman's middle-C water glass and had to be fished
out before he could go on with the Hymn.
Carousing and noisy, the Procession finally reached the huge stand at
the far end of the park, and the music stopped. On the stand was a whole
new group of musicians: harpists, lyrists, players of the flageolet and
dulcimer, two men sweating over glockenspiels, a group equipped with
zithers and citharas and sitars, three women playing nose-flutes, two
men with shofars, and a tall, blond man playing a clarino trumpet. As
the Procession ground to a halt, this new band struck up the Hymn again,
played it through twice, and then stopped.
Seven girls filed out onto the platform in front of the musicians. One
was there representing every year since the last Sabbatical Bacchanal.
Forrester, riding high on the palanquin, beamed down at them, roaring
with happy laughter. They were all for him. Having been carried to one
end of the park in triumph, he was now to march back at the head of his
people, surrounded by seven of the most beautiful girls in New York.
Their final selection had been left, he knew, to a brewery which had
experience in these matters. And the girls certainly looked like the
pick of anybody's crop. Forrester beamed at them again, stood up in the
palanquin and spread his arms wide.
Then he sprang. In a flying leap, he went high into the air and did a
full somersault, landing on his toes on the stage, twenty-five feet
away. The girls were kneeling in a circle around him.
"Come, my doves!" he bellowed. "Come, my pigeons!" His Godlike golden
baritone carried for blocks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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