“Sacrifice them!” she shrieked. “A human sacrifice upon the altar-stone!”
The whistling, strident voices of the mob answered her: “Sacrifice them! A human sacrifice!”
Surely Sanson’s stage-craft was working well. He stood there, facing his victims across the void. He raised his hand, and every voice was stilled.
“I have called you together, citizens, upon this day,” he said, “because, as you once chose freedom in place of bondage, so, now, the time has come to choose again. I have given you liberty, I have given you peace, I have enlightened you and raised you to man’s true dignity. The Christians used to say that man was half ape and half that mythical vertebrate known as the angel. I have driven the ape out of you and made you all angel. That is to say, all man, standing on his own feet, not leaning against imaginary gods to prop him. It has been a difficult battle, for all the vested evils in the world have fought against me. But I have won: your God, your Christ, the superstitious, stubborn heart of man have yielded. Now the old order is ripe to perish everlastingly. There remains one more enemy—”
“Death!” screamed the shrill woman’s voice. “Make us immortal in our beautiful bodies, Sanson! Give us life, everlasting life!”
“The Ant,” pursued the speaker patiently.
It was an unexpected anticlimax. The crowd groaned in disappointment, and the silence that followed was of unutterable grief. That Sanson would bestow his boon upon them, all had believed. Nor had they anticipated Sanson’s declaration. For the idolatrous symbol, which was all they knew of worship, had possessed itself of their imaginations, their aspirations had cleaved to it, and, as must be, what had begun as a symbol had ended as a god.
Sanson was too shrewd not to see immediately that he had struck the wrong note. He swung himself about, facing the captives on the opposite span, and his voice reverberated through the Temple.
“You have demanded sacrifices, human sacrifices,” he cried, “and you shall have them, but not in honor of the Ant. There is no Ant, no God. But there is Freedom, hidden within the cylinder where she has lain since the beginnings of time, waiting for this day to dawn, now ready to emerge into a world set free. To her we sacrifice!”
He stood there, a dramatic figure, the incarnation of rebellious pride, Lucifer defying God, or some old Titan in revolt against Olympus. But, as he paused, the cracked voice of the old bishop piped through the Temple.