ingdom of gorgeous light; the
earth and its petty inhabitants died away, and in the crimson flame I
could almost see Lucifer standing in his glory, god-like and young;
Lucifer in all majesty, surrounded by his court of archangels,
Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, Abaddon.

* * *

I had discovered in the morning, from the steeple of _Santa Maria_, a
queer ruined church, and was oddly impressed by the bare facade, with
the yawning apertures of empty windows. I went to it, but every entrance
was bricked up save one, which had a door of rough boards fastened by a
padlock; and in a neighbouring house I found an old man with a key. It
was a spot of utter desolation; the roof had gone or had never been. The
custodian could not tell whether the church was the wreck of an old
building or a framework that had never been completed; the walls were
falling to decay. Along the nave and in the chapels trees were growing,
shrubs and rank weeds; it was curious the utter ruin in the midst of the
populous town. Pigs ran hither and thither, feeding, with noisy grunts,
as they burrowed about the crumbling altar.

The old man inquired whether I wished to buy the absolute uselessness
of the place fascinated me. I asked the price. He looked me up and down,
and seeing I was foreign, suggested a ridiculous sum. And while I amused
myself with bargaining, I wondered what on earth one could do with a
ruined church in Ronda. Half a dozen fantastic notions passed through my
mind, but they were really too melodramatic.

And now when the sun had set I returned. Notwithstanding his suspicions,
I induced the keeper to give me his key; he could not understand what I
desired at such an hour in that solitary place, and asked if I wished to
sleep there! But I calmed his fears with a _peseta_--money goes a long
way in Spain--and went in alone. The pigs had been removed and all was
silent. A few bats flitted to and fro quickly. The light fell away
greyly, the cold descended on the ruin, and it became very strange and
mysterious. Presently, the roofless chapels seemed to grow alive with
weird invisible things, the rank weeds exhaled chill odours; and in the
lonely silence a mass began. At the ruined altar ghostly priests
officiated, passing quietly from side to side, with bows and
genuflections. The bell tinkled as they raised an invisible host. Soon
it became quite dark, and the moon shone through the great empty windows
of the facade.

V

[Sidenote: M