Here he fell into a musing fit, and having newly fed the beechen flame upon the altar of marble, he approached a point of the Round Room, where a small knob of iron projected from the oaken floor.
Stamping upon the knob, a division of the shelving receded, and a portion of the wall, leaving an open space, while a passage was disclosed into a secret chamber, beyond the Round Room.
A door of dark and solid wood, painted in imitation of the walls of the Round Room, had been made in an aperture of the wall, with shelving placed on its panels, and every sign or mark of the existence of such a door, carefully and effectually erased. It bore a complete resemblance to the other parts of the walls, and no one, save Aldarin, could have dreamed of its existence. The small knob in the oaken floor, communicated with a spring, and the secret door rolled into the adjoining room on grooves fixed in the floor.
Aldarin stepped through the secret passage, the door rolled back, and the Round Room was left to the silent flame and the grinning skull.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
THE CHAMBER OF MYSTERIES.
FEAR * * * AND GIVE GLORY TO HIM, FOR THE HOUR OF HIS JUDGMENT IS COME—THE SMOKE OF THEIR TORMENT ASCENDETH UP FOR EVER AND EVER.—The Book.
A chamber with a low, dark ceiling, supported by massive rafters of oak; floor and wall of dark stone, unrelieved by wainscot or plaster—bare, rugged and destitute—in form, an oblong square, narrow in width, and extensive in length, with the impression of a coffin-like gloom and confinement, resting upon each dark stone and rugged rafter, while the air was insupportable with the scent of decaying mortality.
In the centre arose a rough table of massive oak, with a smoking light, burning in a vessel of iron, placed at each corner, flinging a dreary radiance through the darkness of the chamber.
The light threw its red and murky beams over the fearful burden of the table. It was piled with the unsightly forms of the dead. There were lifeless trunks, all hewn and hacked; there were discolored faces, green with decay; with the eyes scooped from the sockets, the livid skin dropping from the forehead, the jaw torn from its socket, and the brain, once the resting place of the mighty soul, protruding in all its discoloration and corruption over the bared brow; there were arms and limbs torn from the body, some yet wearing the hue of life, others rendered hideous and disgusting by the revel of the worm; there, in that lone room were piled up all these ghastly remains of humanity, these fearful mockeries of life, there rotting relics of what had once enthroned the GIANT SOUL.
The form of a muscular man, with chest of iron, and arms of brass, lay on the centre of the table, side by side with the figure of a fragile woman. The scanty locks of gray hair surmounted the half peeled forehead of the warrior, while the copious tresses of the woman drooped over the white cheek, the alabaster neck, and fell twining over the bosom, yet untainted by decay.