"Let the Christians go forth!"
The choir of temple slaves, hidden in obscurity, took up the burden—
"To the doors! To the doors! Let the Christians go forth! Let the impious go forth!"
Then twenty-four lads, entirely naked, each holding a silver sistrum, like a crescent-moon, came forth from the shadow. In perfect unison they raised the vibrating instruments above their heads, and with one graceful gesture struck the resonant strings, which gave forth a long and plaintive note. Maximus made a sign.
Someone tightly bandaged Julian's eyes from behind and said to him earnestly—
"Go forward! Fear neither Water, Fire, Spirits; nor Bodies, nor Life, nor Death."
He felt himself dragged forward; an iron door opened on creaking hinges. He was pushed through it; a stifling atmosphere beat on his face while his feet groped down slippery and twisted steps. Feeling his way down this endless stair, amidst sepulchral silence, it seemed at last that he must be a great distance underground. He proceeded along a narrow passage—so narrow that his hands, held stiffly to his sides, rubbed along the walls. Suddenly his bare feet struck moisture; he heard water flowing; a stream covered his ankles. He kept on, but at every step the water rose, reaching first his calves, then his knees, and finally his loins. His teeth began to chatter with cold. The flood rose breast high. He wondered—
"Perhaps this is a trap; it is some device of Maximus for killing me, to do the Emperor pleasure."
But he held stoutly on, forging slowly through the water. Finally it seemed to lessen, till at last it completely ebbed away. A suffocating heat, as from the mouth of a furnace, gradually enveloped him, so that the ground scorched his feet. Julian thought he must be walking straight into an oven; blood throbbed in his temples; sometimes the heat was so intense that it licked his cheek like a flame. But the lad never wavered.
In its turn the heat diminished. But sickening odours next choked his breath. Time after time he stumbled against round objects, and recognised bones and dead men's skulls.