“He was older than I, and was, it is true, not the happiest of us all, but the gayest. And the women loved him and feared him equally, for he was in no way to be captivated, either by laughter or by tears. Now he had the thousand-year-old face of men, who, yet living, are dead. It was as if a cruel executioner had removed his eye-lids, that he was condemned never to sleep, so that he was perishing of weariness.
“But it surprised me more than all to find him here, in the cathedral, for he had been, all his life long, the greatest of scoffers.
“I laid my hand on his shoulder. He did not start. He only just turned his eyes—those parched eyes.
“I wanted to ask him: ‘What are you doing here, Jan?’ But the voice of the monk, that awful, spear-hurling voice, threw its sharpness between him and me.... The monk Desertus began to preach....”
Freder turned around and came to Josaphat with violent haste, as though a sudden fear had taken him. He sat down by his friend, speaking very rapidly, with words which tumbled over each other in streaming out.
At first he had hardly listened to the monk. He had watched his friend, and the congregation which was still kneeling, head pressed to head. And, as he looked at them, it seemed to him as though the monk were harpooning the congregation with his words, as though he were throwing spears, with deadly, barbed hooks, right down into the most secret soul of the listeners, as though he were tugging groaning souls out of bodies, quivering with fear.
“Who is she, who has laid fire to this city? She is herself a flame—an impure flame. You were given of a brand, might. She is a fiery blaze over man. She is Lilith, Astarte, Rose of Hell. She is Gomorrha, Babylon—Metropolis! Your own city—this fruitful, sinful City!—has born this woman from out the womb of its hell. Behold her! I say unto you: Behold her! She is the woman who is to appear before the judgment of the world.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
“Seven angels shall stand before God, and there shall be given unto them seven trumpets. And the seven angels, which have the seven trumpets, shall prepare themselves to sound. A star shall fall from heaven to earth and there shall be given up the key to the pit of the abyss. And it shall open the pit of the abyss and there shall go up a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air shall be darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And an angel shall fly in mid heaven, saying with a great voice: ‘Woe, woe, woe, for them that dwell on the earth!’ And another angel shall follow after him and shall say: ‘Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great!'
“Seven angels come out from the heavens, and they bear in their hands the bowls of the wrath of God. And Babylon the great will be remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath—she who is sitting there upon a scarlet-coloured beast full of the names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman is arrayed in purple and scarlet, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup, full of abominations and unclean things. And upon her forehead a name is written: Mystery.... Babylon the Great.... The Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth.