has made two of them; the first of which contains but eight lines,
according to him, and ends at the words fantastic fountain.'--Ozell.).

How the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain in the temple, and
how the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according to the imagination
of those who drank of it.

While we were admiring this incomparable lamp and the stupendous structure
of the temple, the venerable priestess Bacbuc and her attendants came to us
with jolly smiling looks, and seeing us duly accoutred, without the least
difficulty took us into the middle of the temple, where, just under the
aforesaid lamp, was the fine fantastic fountain. She then ordered some
cups, goblets, and talboys of gold, silver, and crystal to be brought, and
kindly invited us to drink of the liquor that sprung there, which we
readily did; for, to say the truth, this fantastic fountain was very
inviting, and its materials and workmanship more precious, rare, and
admirable than anything Plato ever dreamt of in limbo.

Its basis or groundwork was of most pure and limpid alabaster, and its
height somewhat more than three spans, being a regular heptagon on the
outside, with its stylobates or footsteps, arulets, cymasults or blunt
tops, and Doric undulations about it. It was exactly round within. On the
middle point of each angle brink stood a pillar orbiculated in form of
ivory or alabaster solid rings. These were seven in number, according to
the number of the angles (This sentence, restored by Ozell, is omitted by
Motteux.).

Each pillar's length from the basis to the architraves was near seven
hands, taking an exact dimension of its diameter through the centre of its
circumference and inward roundness; and it was so disposed that, casting
our eyes behind one of them, whatever its cube might be, to view its
opposite, we found that the pyramidal cone of our visual line ended at the
said centre, and there, by the two opposites, formed an equilateral
triangle whose two lines divided the pillar into two equal parts.

That which we had a mind to measure, going from one side to another, two
pillars over, at the first third part of the distance between them, was met
by their lowermost and fundamental line, which, in a consult line drawn as
far as the universal centre, equally divided, gave, in a just partition,
the distance of the seven opposite pillars in a right line, beginning at
the obtuse angle on the brink, as you know that an