A score of trumpeters executed a wonderful fanfare, then, amid more pomp than the world had ever yet seen, a crown, of fabulous value and of extraordinary magnificence, was set upon the head of Apleon, who occupied the throne, each of the ten kings actually touching, and helping to set the crown upon his head.
Hitherto, Apleon, though upheld by the ten kings and governments, had, after all, been an un-crowned Dictator. Now, in the hour of his seeming triumph over "The Two Witnesses," he was crowned Roman Emperor of the ten-kingdomed confederacy.
When the coronation ceremony was finally completed, and Apleon, mounted on his black horse, and surrounded by the ten kings, started to ride back to the Palace, he ordered messages to be flashed to all the cities of the world, announcing three days of rejoicing over the slaying of the Witnesses, and also the announcement of his own coronation.
The rejoicings in Jerusalem, Babylon, and elsewhere, over the death of "The Witnesses" was wilder than the "Mafficking" [Transcriber's note: Mafeking?] in England of the Boer war days. The two Witnesses had been a source of torment and fear upon all peoples (save those who clove to God) and now that their headless bodies lay stark and dead on the marble pave of "The Broadway," the people "rejoiced upon them, made merry, and sent gifts one to another." Rev. xi. 10.
The outrage upon decency, sanitation, and even common humanity, in suffering the two bodies to remain unburied, lasted three days and a half. Three days and a half was long enough period for the representatives of every nation, gathered in the city and neighbourhood, to be perfectly assured that they were dead. "And certain ones from among the peoples and the tribes and tongues and nations behold their corpses three days and a half, and suffer not their corpses to be put in sepulchre." Rev. xi. 9.
When Edward the 7th of Britain, lay dead in the great Abbey of the Empire, it was counted high honour to be part of the silent guard over the coffin.
And men almost fought for the privilege to stand guard over the headless forms of the Two Witnesses lying on that marble pave in Jerusalem: "It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." Luke xiii. 33.
But these death-guards were not silent. They laugh scornfully, derisively, and crack jokes upon the now silenced testimony of the Two Witnesses. Caricatures, and comic cuts upon their lives, their death, their oft-repeated warnings, were printed and sold in the streets of the city.
It was the evening of the fourth day after the setting up of the image in the Temple, and three and a half days since the Witnesses were slain. A last, a final public function before the dispersal of the kings, and others specially gathered for the coronation, and other ceremonies, had been arranged for 6 o'clock in "The Broadway."
Apleon, and the other kings had gathered. The trumpeters had blown one blast upon their silver instruments, when a cry of horror burst from the gathered multitudes. For the bodies of the Two Witnesses suddenly stood upon their feet.