He stood up and remained standing, seeming to be listening to the rushing of the rain. The lightning was still flashing out over Metropolis, the angry thunder bounding after. But the rushing of the rain drowned it.
“I slept ...” Freder went on—so softly that the other could scarcely follow his words—“then I began to dream.... I saw this city—this great Metropolis—in the light of a ghostly unreality. A weird moon stood in the sky; as though along a broad street this ghostly, unreal light flowed down upon the city, which was deserted to the last soul. All the houses were distorted and had faces. They squinted evilly and spitefully down at me, for I was walking deep down between them, along the glimmering street.
“Quite narrow was this street as though crushed between the houses; it was as though made of a greenish glass—like a solidified, glazen river. I glided along it and looked down through it into the cold bubbling of a subterranean fire.
“I did not know my destination, but I knew I had one, and went very fast in order to reach it the sooner. I quietened my step as well as I could, but its sound was excessively loud and awakened a rustling whisper over the crooked house-walls as though the houses were murmuring against me. I quickened my pace and ran, and, at last, raced along, and the more swiftly I raced the more hoarsely did the echo of the steps sound after me, as though there were an army at my heels, I was dripping with sweat....
“The town was alive. The houses were alive. Their open mouths snarled after me. The window-caverns, open eyes, winked blindly, horribly, maliciously.
“Graspingly, I reached the square before the cathedral....
“The cathedral was lighted up. The doors stood open—no, they did not stand open. They reeled to and fro like swing-doors through which an invisible stream of guests was passing. The organ rolled, but not with music. Croaking, bawling, screeching and whimpering sounded from the organ and intermingled were wanton dance tunes, wailing whore-songs.
“The swing-doors, the light, the organ’s witches sabbath, everything appeared to be mysteriously excited, hurried, as though there were no time to be lost, and full of a deep evil satisfaction.
“I walked over to the cathedral and up the steps. A door laid hold of me, like an arm, and wafted me gustily in the cathedral.
“But that was as little the cathedral as the town was Metropolis. A pack of lunatics seemed to have taken possession of it, and not even human beings, at that. Dwarf-like creatures, resembling half monkey, half devil. In place of the saints, goat-like figures, petrified in the most ridiculous of leaps, reigned in the pillar niches. And around every pillar danced a ring, raving to the bawling of the music.