Gorga: "So is my cloak. What will my husband say?"
Arm in arm they walked along the road to the edge of the Bruchium where the banquet is being prepared.
"Is it much farther?" they demanded of an old woman.
"Alas, yes, my children!"
"At least it will be an easy matter to get in?"
The old woman, who knew her Homer, teased them: "'With strenuous efforts the Greeks entered Troy.' If you take enough trouble, my fair maids, you may reach your goal!"
* * *
There was a sudden flourish of trumpets. It was the signal for the procession to start. It filed by, solemn, unending, with the musicians at its head, half-naked cymbal players clanging their shining disks; cithern players, who sounded rings strung on metal threads; men, striking with sycamore sticks the wild asses' skins stretched over round drums hanging from their necks.
At a certain distance, intended to indicate the difference between them and what was merely human, the cortège of priests appeared. The trumpet players had already commanded silence and with reverent interest the spectators gazed at the horoscope casters, who could reveal the future; the hieroglyphic readers; prophets with long beards, who burned incense in little brass boxes; priests, whose duty it was to offer to faithful worshippers the images of the gods. Raising their gilded staffs, some would balance the standards by their painted ends; others, accompanied them in chariots; amid the general exultation, and before the staring eyes of the crowd, filed the mysterious figures of Apis, Hathor, the Bull; of the grimacing Toth, of Horus, in his sparrow-hawk mask, of Anubis, the god of Death, all expressing unknown power. There were great shoutings and cries as these images passed, for all believed in the might of this blind matter, all believed in its power of conferring an infinite degree of strength on the suppliant.
Between two rows of soldiers the High Priest at last was seen advancing. He was a very old man and leaned on a cane. A long, hyacinth-coloured veil covered his hands and his face, which no profane glance was allowed to desecrate. He alone was admitted to private conference with the god, who presently, through his mouth, would reveal the oracle. After him came the priestesses, young, pure, dressed entirely in white, their pointed fingers balancing the stems of lotus-flowers. Then followed the conjurers, with their quivering torches; the bell ringers; the bird catchers, who, on their batons daubed with glue, held the sacred fowls. Then came the beggars, exposing their infirmities; the vendors of sacred images, of scarabs, of amulets; the inevitable commercial tail that always drags behind wherever man raises up a god to be adored. And all this tide of incongruous beings, this turbulent collection of races, of passions, of divers interests, advanced in order, marching with even step toward the fascinating goal, which yonder against the azure sky, resplendent and sacred, called to them all alike to come: the temple of Serapis.