And above these, delicate and daring, soared a convergence of groinings, with a maze of exquisite spires and pinnacles, resembling a forest of stalagmites. Together they formed an oval whose chief colors—steel-blue, dark and sparkling, light-grey, and silver—resembled a cloud or a glacier; yet all harmoniously fashioned by human hands. Above, on a colossal tripod, glowed the emblem of love and life—the Golden Flame!
Although thousands of people from every side were ceaselessly pouring into the temple, and disappearing amid the dark columns, it was very still there—so still that above the sound of moving feet one could distinctly hear the babbling of the brooks that, coursing through the verdant terraces, flowed thence to the four corners of the plain.
Johannes tried to follow the soft speech of the people, but he did not understand the language. Then Windekind, calling his attention to a trio of persons—a vigorous father about fifty years of age, and his two sons, slender, fine fellows not far from twenty—said, "Listen to them!" It was Dutch they were speaking—pure, mellifluous Dutch.
The father said: "Look, Gerbrand; the lowest columns are so large that ten men could not encircle them. But within the temple, in the great oval centre, there are a hundred columns, far larger, that reach to the floor of the third terrace. On the groined arches resting upon those columns stand twice as many smaller pillars, which, rising somewhat higher than the gallery of the third terrace, are attached thereto by a system of buttresses. On these two hundred smaller pillars rests the enormous middle dome which over-arches the oval hall. The dome is entirely of metal. The dark blue is steel; the grey, aluminium; the bright green, bronze. The pinnacles, arches, and ornamentations are all of silver or silver-plated steel. In the four corner-spaces, between square and oval, stand four towers, having small gold-covered cupolas. Within these, elevators move up and down, and through them the water also is raised for the terraces.
"The tall tripod at the top of the dome is of bronze, and the flame is gilded bronze. The flame itself is twelve metres long, and its tip is a hundred and eighty metres above the plain."
Gerbrand, the younger son, knitting his brows as he regarded the awe-inspiring spectacle, asked: "How many people have worked upon it, father?"
"Oh, more than a hundred thousand, for nearly a century. But if the temple should again collapse, as once it did, ten times as many more would eagerly come, to rebuild it in less than half that time."
Drawing nearer, Johannes discerned, on the stone band beneath the first terrace, colossal silver letters, in plain Roman form. On the front a portion of a proverb was legible. The rest of it probably ran around the entire temple. Johannes retained the majestic tenor of it, although he did not comprehend the full meaning. Facing him was:
REDEUNT SATURNIA REGNA
and on the eastern side he read the first words,