to some suggesting only terror, while
others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally
Banished seems absorbed.[56]

[56] This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think,
peculiar to Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the
primitive inspiration.

* * * * *

Act First. The magnificent _In troit_ taken by Christendom from
antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies where the people in long
train streamed under the colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is
now taken back for himself by the elder god upon his return to power.
The _Lavabo_, likewise borrowed from the heathen lustrations,
reappears now. All this he claims back by right of age.

His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the Elder; but she
would sometimes have been young. Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen,
pretty, and horribly savage.

The Devil's bride was not to be a child: she must be at least thirty
years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of
pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great
serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her
black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of
vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets of death.

When she has had the children taken off to their meal, the service
begins: "I will come before thine altar; but save me, O Lord, from the
faithless and violent man (from the priest and the baron)."

Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage to the new master,
the feudal kiss, like the greetings of the Temple, when all was
yielded without reserve, without shame, or dignity, or even purpose;
the denial of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming
preference for Satan's back.

It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The wooden deity
receives her in the manner of an olden Pan or Priapus. Following the
old pagan form she sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like
the Delphian seeress on Apollo's tripod. After receiving the breath of
his spirit, the sacrament of his love, she purifies herself with like
formal solemnity. Thenceforth she is a living altar.

* * * * *

The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the feast. Contrary
to the festive fashion of the nobles, who all sit with their swords
beside them, here, in this feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a
knife.

As a keeper of th