'What is the name of thy bride, thy stainless dove?'
'Madonna Cassandra! Madonna Cassandra!' roared the great voice.
Hearing the pronouncement of her name, the girl's blood froze in her veins. Her hair stood erect.
'Madonna Cassandra! Cassandra!' rang the cry from the crowd. 'Where hideth she? Where is our sovereign? Ave Arcisponsa Cassandra!'
She hid her face and would have fled; but bony fingers, claws, antennæ, and probosces, and the hairy legs of spiders seized her; and dragged her trembling before the throne. The rank odour of a goat, and a chill as of death smote her; she closed her eyes in dread. Then he upon the throne cried: 'Come!'
Her head hanging, she saw at her feet a fiery cross gleaming through the darkness. She made a supreme effort, took a step forward, and raised her eyes.
Then a miracle took place.
The goat's skin fell from him as the scales from a sloughing snake; she was face to face with Dionysus the Olympian; thyrsis and vine-branch in his hands, a smile of eternal joy upon his lips, the panther at his feet pawing at the grapes.
And the Sabbato diabolico changed into the divine orgies of Bacchus; the witches became Mænads, the monstrous demons were kindly goat-footed Satyrs; the chalk rocks were colonnades of shining marble, lighted by the sun, and between them in the distance was the purple sea. The radiant gods of Hellas, surrounded by an aureole of fire, were gathering in the clouds, and the Satyrs and the Bacchantes, beating their timbrels, cutting their breasts with knives, squeezing the grape-juice into goblets of gold, and mingling it with their blood, danced and circled and sang:—
'Glory to Dionysus! Glory to Dionysus! The gods have risen! Glory to the eternal gods!'