Only once before had he passed through the massive entrance, and then a single lamp, carried in the hand, had afforded him glimpses only of the architecture of the place, where the Egyptians, wrapt in their everlasting robes, were waiting for the time when it should be permitted them to link together again the broken chain of life, and end their existence with a moment of delirious joy—of joy so intense as to compensate for all their life-long toil, and a voluntary entombment of a thousand years. Even then, when a thousandth part was not revealed to him, what he had seen had caused him to tremble. The pillars by which the roof was supported seemed of adamantine strength; but this was relieved by no graceful capital, nor was the surface smooth and polished. On the contrary, deeply engraven on the stone were unintelligible signs, and exact images of the loathliest animals and most noxious plants. There were sculptured groups in abundance; but hate and destruction in their most horrible garbs formed the only theme. Here was a serpent enveloping a deer in its scaly folds; the deer had been designed with the most graceful form, but the marble of which it was carved seemed shivering with horror. There, again, was a man of unshapely form, but evidently of immense strength, with a brow that denoted the highest intelligence, and features that expressed the intensest cruelty, strangling a being of the most perfect stature and beauty. There were pictures, too, and in one of these, at first glance, he had missed the prevailing emotion. A number of maidens were bathing, as careless, unconscious, and graceful as water-lilies hardly moved by the breeze; but when he looked again he saw beneath the water a monster that seemed half alligator, half serpent, and yet altogether human. These glimpses had filled him with horror on his first visit, but now the light of an African sun fully revealed the minutest details. The pillars with their engraven loathliness, the paintings and sculptures almost innumerable, seemed as if they had been suddenly endowed with life by the heat and glare of the sun. But they formed only an appropriate setting to the rest of the picture.