Startled by this profane interruption, he cast a look of alarm towards the statue, as if fearful lest the God should have heard my words. Then, turning to me, in a tone of mild solemnity, “It is but too plain,” said he, “that thoughts of the upper world, and of its vain delights, still engross thee too much, to let the lessons of Truth sink profitably into thy heart. A few hours of meditation amid this solemn scenery—of that wholesome meditation, which purifies, by saddening—may haply dispose thee to receive, with reverence, the holy and immortal knowledge that is in store for thee. With this hope, I now leave thee to thy own thoughts, and to that God, before whose calm and mournful eye the vanities of the world, from which thou comest, wither!” Thus saying, he turned slowly away, and passing behind the statue, towards which he had pointed during the last sentence, suddenly, and as if by enchantment, disappeared from my sight. CHAP. IX. Being left to my own solitary thoughts, I had now leisure to reflect, with coolness, on the inconveniences, if not dangers, of the situation into which my love of adventure had hurried me. However ready my imagination was to kindle, in its own ideal sphere, I have ever found that, when brought into contact with reality, it as suddenly cooled;—like those meteors, that seem stars in the air, but, the moment they touch earth, are extinguished. Such was the disenchantment that now succeeded to the dreams in which I had been indulging. As long as Fancy had the field of the future to herself, even immortality did not seem too distant a race for her. But when human instruments interposed, the illusion vanished. From mortal lips the promise of immortality seemed a mockery, and imagination herself had no wings that could carry beyond the grave. Nor was this disappointment the only feeling that occupied me;—the imprudence of the step, which I had taken, now appeared in its full extent before my eyes. I had thrown myself into the power of the most artful priesthood in the world, without a chance of being able to escape from their toils, or to resist any machinations with which they might beset me. It seemed evident, from the state of preparation in which I had found all that wonderful apparatus, by which the terrors and splendours of Initiation are produced, that my descent into the pyramid was not unexpected. Numerous, indeed, and active as were the spies of the Sacred College of Memphis, there could be but little doubt that all my movements, since my arrival, had been tracked; and the many hours I had passed in watching and wandering round the pyramid, betrayed a curiosity which might well inspire these wily priests with the hope of drawing an Epicurean into their superstitious toils.