The streets were wider, the buildings more magnificent, the crowd, if possible, denser, as he proceeded through the city.
Presently, reaching a wide flight of low broad marble steps, flanked by those colossal bulls with eagles' wings and human heads, that represented the strength and solidity of the great Assyrian empire, he halted to dismount; for a cloth of gold and scarlet had been rolled out from top to bottom, and down these stairs were marching a body of white-robed priests with slow and solemn gait, their centre figure walking three paces before the rest, and advancing obviously to hold conference with the messenger from the camp.
Then the young warrior took a jewelled signet from his breast, and with a low obeisance pressed it to heart, mouth, and forehead; while over the eager multitude came unbroken silence, as Sarchedon tendered to Assarac, high-priest of Baal, his token from the Great King.
CHAPTER III
SEMIRAMIS
The silence lasted but a short space. When his lord, ere he accompanied that priestly escort into the palace, bestowed one parting caress on Merodach, shouts longer and more deafening than ever went up into the sunny sky. The good horse, led away by half a dozen negroes, now seemed to attract universal attention; for Sarchedon had disappeared between the gigantic bulls of stone that guarded each entrance to the royal dwelling. His armour, here and there defaced with sword-stroke or spear-thrust, his dusty, travel-stained garments, and, notwithstanding bodily strength and warlike training, the weary gait of one who has seen the sun set twice without quitting the saddle, were in marked contrast to the glittering splendour and refined magnificence of all that surrounded him. The marble steps, skirted by their entablatures of gilding and sculpture coloured to the life; the broad level terrace, glistening and polished like a steel breastplate inlaid with gold; the regal front of the costly palace itself, with its colossal eagle-headed figures, its winged monsters, couching or erect, its sacred emblems, its strange deities, its mystic forms, tributes of adoration offered to a host of gods, as the long succession of lifelike carvings on the walls, brought out in high relief with boldness of design and brightness of tint, were memorials of the triumphs won by a line of kings.
Here were represented the pleasures of the chase, the vicissitudes of war, the lion, the stag, the boar, the wild bull, beasts, landscapes, rivers, chariots and horsemen, warriors, captives, towers, and towns. Above rose a hundred stately pillars to support their painted chambers roofed with cedar and other precious wood, inlaid in elaborate and fantastic patterns, brilliant with vermilion or other gaudy colours, and profusely ornamented with gold. Over these lofty rooms rose yet another story, on ivory columns carved with the utmost skill that Indian handicraft could produce and Bactrian triumphs furnish, under a roof of which the very battlements and parapets were plated with silver and gold.
High above all towered the sacred structure of cedar, which formed that mysterious retreat, remote from the gaze of man, where none might enter but the monarch alone when ministering in his holy office, and combining in his own person the sacred characters of priest and king.
Assarac left his retinue at the gate of the palace, where stood two pillars of sardonyx to render poison innocuous should it pass through, and over which a gigantic carbuncle flashed its lurid rays, that seemed to shed an angry gleam even in the darkness of night. He bade Sarchedon follow, and the pair strode swiftly on through a cool and spacious hall, propped by as many columns as there were days in the Assyrian year, or furlongs in the circuit of the city walls, till, having thus traversed the palace at its narrowest part, they emerged once more on a paradise or garden, where the first object that met their eyes was a wild stag roused from his lair, and scouring with all the freedom of his native mountains to the shelter of a neighbouring thicket.