But to return to the present and my going. The journey was long, yet short, and I took it alone. It led through a mighty forest dark as night, chilly and damp, with here and there the shining coils of a sleeping serpent lying prone across the path. This was the mighty vestibule to hell, that spread through space by regions infinite. Here the traveller may often lose himself and fall down starved and dead. Here the sinuous snake will coil its writhing body round him and drag him o’er the unresisting slimy soil right to the prison gates which he in life so feared—or, maybe, laughed at.
By the side of blackened pools and hideous precipice I passed far out into the wild. The darkness was as clear as light before me, for I saw with darkened sight. Crags, rocks and gurgling torrents, flowing through dreary chasms, met my eyes, and the further I went the lonelier I ever grew, for the pressure of intensity had fallen on to Silence and the power of Goodness no longer walked beside.
I saw the glorious bubbles floating round me—red, purple, golden-yellow, green—I heard the magic music as it tinkled, I saw the victim quiver when it stilled. I heard the helpless cry, and then the laugh of devils as it died; I heard the feeble, far-off echo of the world, and darker, drearier grew the scene.
One by one the bubbles burst and fainter grew, note by note the music died upon the ear, the mortal cry of pain was left behind, and Silence, born of all, closed round me as I trod.
Then before me in the distance gleamed the danger-lights of hell, bloody-red against the darkness, clear and piercing as they shone. As I drew nearer they shone still clearer, lighting up the shining bulwarks, polished and cut like myriads of gem-strewn columns in the night.
The heavy gates were open, no sound disturbed my thought, yet I stood still upon the threshold and looked behind. Far off in the distance through the darkness gleamed a gloomy, lurid light upon a leaden ball, and on the farther side, almost like giant shadows on a giant curtain, two giant forms were struggling for the ball.
But that to me had little interest. Why should it have? Who ever yet upon Hell’s threshold glanced back except to breathe the air that is not? For Misery had come, and Desolation, and Mistrust, that fiend of fiends which eats the hearts of kings and poisons homesteads, bringing one general curse to all.
Thus far I had come alone and unattended, but as I passed beneath the overwhelming shadow I became conscious of this other world.
And the thing that struck me most on entering was the deathly silence hanging over all. And the next thing that struck me was the weird, unnatural beauty of the scene. And the next that I was now no longer quite alone.
To a broad avenue, banked by sculptured terraces and crowned with towering mansions, I had come, yet in this city of the night no living form appeared, till, looking up above to some alabaster steps carved by some magic hand, I beheld a spirit woman watching me.