The visitors were politely given to understand that they, too, would be expected to contribute something to this lavish display of wealth.
“It is usual,” said the secretary, “for those who consult the future to make some little offering. This part of the business has been put under my management. The master never touches coin; he must go into the presence of the spirits with clean hands. Touched with dross, they might raise the wrath of the Unseen Ones.”
The two friends thought the scruple a little fine-drawn, but said nothing.
“My master,” the secretary went on, “is unwilling that any one should be shut out from the sight of that which might profit him for lack of means, and has fixed the fee at five darics.[67] There are rich men who force upon him, so to speak, much more costly gifts.”
The friends, who happened to have their pockets full of prize-money, produced the ten darics, not without a misgiving that what they were to hear would scarcely be worth the money. But the adventure, if followed so far, would have to be followed to the end. To grumble would be useless, and if there was anything to be learnt, might injure the chance of learning it.
The gold duly handed over, the inquirers were taken back, not to the chamber in which Arioch had received them, but to one of a far more imposing kind. It was a lofty vaulted room, pervaded with a dim green light coming from an invisible source; as there were neither lamps nor any window or skylight to be seen. The tessellated floor had strange devices, hideous figures of the demons which were the life-long terror of the superstitious Babylonians. On a brazen altar in the centre of the room some embers were smouldering. These, as the visitors entered, were fanned by some unseen agency to a white heat. A moment afterwards Arioch threw some handfuls of incense on them, and the room was soon filled with fumes of a most stupefying fragrance. The magician himself was certainly changed from the worldly-looking personage whom the friends had seen an hour before. His face wore a look of exaltation; while the dim green light had changed its healthy hue to a ghastly paleness. His secular attire had been changed for priestly robes of white, bound round the waist by a girdle which looked like a serpent, and surmounted by a mitre in the top of which a curious red light was seen to burn. The young men, though half-contemptuous of what they could not help thinking to be artificial terrors, yet felt a certain awe creeping over them as they gazed.
“You desire,” said the magician in a voice which his visitors could hardly recognize as that in which he had before accosted them, “you desire to hear from the spirits what they have to tell you of the future.”
“We do,” said Charidemus.