Below the door, a flight of marble steps descended into the earth, and a bright light streamed upward from below. Casting down his spade, the priest descended; at the foot of the stairs he entered a vast hall; a number of men, habited in costly apparel, and sitting in solemn silence, occupied the centre; around, and on every side, were riches innumerable: piles of gold and enamelled vases; rich and glittering robes, and heaps of jewels of the brightest hue.
The hall was lighted by one jewel alone; a carbuncle so bright, so dazzling, that the priest could hardly bear to gaze upon it, where it stood in a corner of the hall. At the opposite end of the hall stood an armed archer; his bow was strung, and the arrow fitted to the string, and he seemed to take aim at the carbuncle; his brow blazed with reflected light, and on it was written: “I am, that I am; my shaft is inevitable: yon glittering jewel cannot escape its stroke.”
Beyond the great hall appeared another chamber, into which the priest, amazed at what he saw, entered. It was fitted as a bedchamber, couches of every kind ornamented it, and many beautiful women, arrayed in robes as costly as those worn in the great hall, occupied the chamber. Here too all was mute; the beautiful damsels sat in silence.
Still the priest went onward. There were rooms after rooms, stables filled with horses and asses, and granaries stored with abundant forage. He placed his hand on the horses, they were cold, lifeless stone. Servants stood round about, their lips were closed—all was silent as the grave; and yet what was there wanting—what but life?
“I have seen to-day what no man wall believe,” said the priest, as he re-entered the great hall; “let me take something whereby to prove the credit of my story.”
As he thus spake to himself, he saw some vases and jewel-handed knives on a marble table beside him; he raised his hand, he clasped them, he placed them in the bosom of his garment—all was dark.
The archer had shot with his arrow; the carbuncle was broken into a thousand pieces—a thick darkness covered the place; hour after hour he wandered about the halls and passages—all was dark—all was cold—all was desolate; the stairs seemed to have fled, he found no opening, and he laid him down and died a miserable death, amid those piles of gold and jewels, his only companions the lifeless images of stone. His secret died with him.
“Spenser in his Fairy Queen seems to have had some such tale as this in his mind, in his scene in the House of Riches,” remarked Herbert.
“You allude to the fiend watching Sir Gouyon, and hoping that he will be tempted to snatch some of the treasures of the subterraneous palace, so freely displayed to his view.”
“Sir Gouyon fares better than your priest,” replied Herbert; he resists the temptation, and escapes the threatened doom; as the poet says: