They were inside the sanctuary of the Holy Place. The silence was of a tomb. Gone was the golden Altar. Gone were golden cherubim and seraphim above the Altar of which the Psalmist sang. Gone were the golden candlesticks in mystic sevens. Gone were the great golden basins and the brass brazier in which the priests had burned sacrifices for the people’s sins from the days of Solomon. Gone were the cunningly wrought tapestries of Damascus and Babylon in woven gold and blue and purple and scarlet, which veiled the Holy of Holies in mystic purity from profane gaze. Ax and sword had hacked the sheathing of gold and silver from the pillars to each side supporting the cloisters and galleries. And where were the mystic treasure boxes between pillars, in which the Jews hoarded the offerings of the faithful through the fateful centuries? The Babylonians had rifled these treasures long centuries ago; but they had left the treasure chests. So had Antiochus of the North; but even he could not destroy these great iron boxes, though he had offered swine upon that vanished altar; and when Herod the Great had restored the Temple, these treasure chests had been left filled and untouched for a hundred years. Again the page swayed as faint; for sprawled on the pavement floor lay drunken Sicarii Ruffians in the dead sleep of swinish debauch, with sword in one hand, the golden flagons and cups of the altar service in the other, and they slept on a floor thickening with human blood. A slight tremor ran through the Temple, as of an earthquake from the Dead Sea; or was it that the senses of the page swam at what he saw? The Temple pavement seemed to heave and sink. The great Golden Gate to the east—ninety feet it was in height—swung open as of unseen hands, flooding the horror with a burst of sunlight. The page covered his face with his hand. Was this the crumbling kingdom of reality for which one grasped, rejecting that other shadow kingdom not made with hands, but made of rest and peace and light and love and eternity? Julius, the old Idumean, with one eye gleaming through his vizor on the swinish forms asleep, and his long sword in his right hand, was prying with the dirk in his left to hoist the stone that gave secret drop to the dry Aqueduct below. The stone lifted as on hinges. The old Idumean laid down his right-hand long sword, grasped the page by the neck, signaled him to catch the edge of the black hole for the drop and was still holding the trapdoor up, when either the tremor of the earthquake, or the flood of sunburst from the Golden Gate, disturbed the sleepers. “Down, you tricky she-vixen of hell,” the Idumean hissed, “and hang by your hands, which I’ve trapped, till Rome rots.”