‘All that remains of Antioch, noble Emir; of Anti-och the superb, with its hundred towers, and its sacred groves and fanes of flashing beauty.’
‘Unhappy Asia!’ exclaimed the Emir; ‘thou hast indeed fallen!’
‘When all was over,’ said the Queen; ‘when the people refused to sacrifice, and the gods, indignant, quitted earth, I hope not for ever, the faithful few fled to these mountains with the sacred images, and we have cherished them. I told you we had beautiful and consoling thoughts, and more than thoughts. All else is lost, our wealth, our arts, our luxury, our invention, all have vanished. The niggard earth scarcely yields us a subsistence; we dress like Kurds, feed hardly as well; but if we were to quit these mountains, and wander like them on the plains with our ample flocks, we should lose our sacred images, all the traditions that we yet cherish in our souls, that in spite of our hard lives preserve us from being barbarians; a sense of the beautiful and the lofty, and the divine hope that, when the rapidly consummating degradation of Asia has been fulfilled, mankind will return again to those gods who made the earth beautiful and happy; and that they, in their celestial mercy, may revisit that world which, without them, has become a howling wilderness.’
‘Lady,’ said Tancred, with much emotion, ‘we must, with your permission, speak of these things. My heart is at present too full.’
‘Come hither,’ said the Queen, in a voice of great softness; and she led Tancred away.
They entered a chamber of much smaller dimensions, which might be looked upon as a chapel annexed to the cathedral or Pantheon which they had quitted. At each end of it was a statue. They paused before one. It was not larger than life, of ivory and gold; the colour purer than could possibly have been imagined, highly polished, and so little injured, that at a distance the general effect was not in the least impaired.
‘Do you know that?’ asked the Queen, as she looked at the statue, and then she looked at Tancred.
‘I recognise the god of poetry and light,’ said Tancred; ‘Phoebus Apollo.’
‘Our god: the god of Antioch, the god of the sacred grove! Who could look upon him, and doubt his deity!’
‘Is this indeed the figure,’ murmured Tancred, ‘before which a hundred steers have bled? before which libations of honeyed wine were poured from golden goblets? that lived in a heaven of incense?’