s that longed to see, that must
see--and that could not; thousands stood there like condemned criminals,
whose heads are on the block, who hear the executioner behind them, and
who still, on the very threshold of death, hope for respite and release.

Gorgo found no answer to her own questionings; but she, too, wanted
to see--must see. And she saw Constantine close his eyes, as though he
dared not contemplate the deed that Fate had condemned him to do; she
saw him lay his left hand on the god's sacred beard, saw him raise his
right for the fatal blow--saw, heard, felt the axe crash again and
again on the cheek of Serapis--saw the polished ivory fall in chips
and shavings, large and small, on the stone floor, and leap up with an
elastic rebound or shiver into splinters. She covered her face with her
hands and hid her head in the curtain, weeping aloud. She could only
moan and sob, and feel nothing, think nothing but that a momentous and
sinister act had been perpetrated. An appalling uproar like the noise of
thunder and the beating of surf rose up on every side, but she heeded it
not; and when at length the physician called her by her name, when she
turned from the curtain and once more looked out, instead of the sublime
image of the god she saw in the niche a shapeless log of wood, a hideous
mass against which several ladders were propped, while the ground was
heaped and strewed with scraps of ivory, fragments of gold-plate, and
chips of marble. Constantine had disappeared; the ladders and the plinth
of the statue were covered with a swarm of soldiers and monks who were
finishing the work of destruction. As soon as the young officer had
struck the first blow, and the god had submitted in abject impotence,
they had rushed upon him and saved their captain the trouble of ending
the task he had begun.

The great idol was desecrated. Serapis was no more--the heaven of the
heathen had lost its king. The worshippers of the deposed god, sullen,
furious, and bitterly disabused, made their way out of the temple and
looked up at the serene blue sky, the unclouded sunshine, for some
symptoms of an avenging tempest; but in vain.

Theophilus had also quitted the scene with the Comes, leaving the
work of devastation in the competent hands of the monks. He knew his
skin-clad adherents well; and he knew that within a very few days not
an idol, not a picture, not a token would remain intact to preserve the
memory of the old gods; a thou