He ascended, whilst Psyche remained kneeling. When he was high in the air, there came a peal of thunder, as if the heavens would burst asunder. The sky was dark, but lit up by the lightning. In the black sky, in the lightning flame, rose fearfully the three hundred towers. And the thunder-claps rumbled on, one after the other, as if the Past were perishing in the last day....
With a joyful cry, Psyche hastened along the terraces, the battlements, ramparts, entered the castle, and went down the steps. Lower and lower she descended, lower than the vaults; and as she passed them, she threw a kiss in the direction where the old king lay buried.... She descended still lower, and yet she heard the thunder pealing above, and the castle seemed to tremble to its very foundations.
She descended still lower: she descended very deep pits, built like towers reversed to the central nave of the earth. She descended step after step, thousands of steps, groping in the darkness. She walked with unerring foot, that felt for the next step, that detected the slippery stone; she felt and never hesitated. Another step and then another; again a pit, pit after pit, all the pits of the Past. Bats flew up and flapped their wings, spiders she felt crawling over her, an icy dampness fell like a chill wind upon her shoulders.
Deeper down she went, and deeper. It was pitch dark, and above she heard nothing more; she heard only the flapping of the gigantic bats, the droning of the envious spiders. But she defended herself with her little hand; as she descended, she beat about her, beat the bats away, seized a vampire, held it tightly by the neck, and strangled it. Her foot glided over toads, she slipped over snakes, but she got up again and beat the bats and fought with the vampires. The Chimera had so inspired her with strength, that she felt strong as a giant, young and courageous; he had filled her eyes with such light that she saw him in the darkness.
In the pitchy darkness his flaming wings were distinctly visible. And on she went descending; thick clouds of dust, the deepest shadows of Emeralda’s transitoriness, rose up, but she kept breathing, never hesitating, and her foot felt instinctively the next step, and she struck at the bats and fought with the vampires. When she throttled them, a human cry was heard, and the echo sounded a thousand times like the anxious cry of a murder. But she was not afraid. She kept on descending....
She kept descending. At last she felt no more steps but voidness under her feet, and she sank ... like a feather, through heavier air; she sank, she sank deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper.... A black draught of air, an invisible wind, damp and chill, made her feel that she had passed all the pits, that she was sinking outside them in the open air, invisible and black, thick as ink. Then she began to sink more slowly, and ... her feet touched ground.
Sounds soft and low, like the plaintive strains of a viol, rose up from afar, like music of the sea, the plaint of a thousand voices which never became melody.
The far-off sound continued quivering as an accompaniment of wind, of a black wind which blew, and overpowered the music of the sea. Sometimes it went a little higher, sometimes a little lower, and always remained the vague and distant incomprehensible harmony.
From where the wind came, from where the plaintive murmuring arose, thither would Psyche go. And with her foot she kept feeling, and with her outstretched hands, and on she went....
Long, long she went in the darkness, till the darkness became less opaque and lit up with phosphoric flickerings; and she saw: