After this half-elfin, half-infernal pageant, come the men of the city.
And what men! Bent and crippled shapes with tottering knees, crooked necks, nerveless arms, quenched eyes, and soulless faces, tottering along like drunkards; a host of miserable, withered skeletons. If a manlier, statelier shape appear here and there among the decrepit mob, it is quite the exception; and the features of all, without exception, handsome or hideous, bear the brand of a curse upon them, a spasmodic twitching of the lips, that unmistakable, unconcealable trait which marks the beast, the demon, and the maniac.
The most incontrovertible token of the degeneracy of a race is when its women are very fair and its men very hideous. There ruin already lurks in the background.
And the rear is brought up by an infernal, sense-bewildering throng of monsters, for which human language has no names. Beasts with human heads, and human shapes with repulsive bestial heads; a fearful blasphemy of the sacred order of divine nature; terrifying, mongrel monsters, half man, half beast; accursed witnesses of the insane degeneracy of human nature; creatures of whom all antiquity records but one example—the Minotaur.
In the Fortunate Islands these abortions form a whole tribe, and those who behold them are no longer shocked or terrified at the sight.
CHAPTER VIII
TRITON
A single large round window in the cupola above admits the light into Triton's temple.
Amidst the statues of grim, phantasmal figures which serve as the pillars of the roof sits the wonder of the primæval world, the creature most resembling man, who existed before man was yet created, the homo diluvii.
Even as he sits he measures four-and-twenty feet in height. His feet are disproportionately small, while his enormously long elbows rest upon his knees. His whole body is covered with a bluish-green scaly skin, like that of a sea-serpent wrinkled with age. The face resembles a man's. Its skin is of a lighter colour than the rest of the body, and is drawn quite tight and smooth round the flat, scarcely projecting nose. His forehead is round and flat. Two eyeballs, seemingly perched upon fleshy stalks, stare out of the vast eye-sockets. They are of a painfully vivid scarlet, but cold as stone and surrounded by glittering gold rims such as we meet with round the eyes of fishes. The mouth is lipless, and only visible when it is open, but then it stretches on both sides as far as the little round ears, which are covered with a thin film. A splendid gold crown, with an upright pointed horn at each corner, adorns his head. Round his loins winds a gold-embroidered cloth, fastened by a girdle set with diamonds, and beneath the cloth extends a long, comb-like backbone, terminating in a squirrel's tail.
Thus, year after year, the monster sits motionless on his golden chair. The only sign of life he gives is a sluggish twitching of his eyelids, and the hunger fit which comes upon him once a year, when he opens his mouth and roars till he is satisfied; immediately afterwards becoming dumb again, and remaining so for another year, with his hands resting on his knees, and his immovable, goggle eyes blankly staring at the stony marvels of his own temple, impervious to every outward influence.