Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/127

 photographers may still have the fane illuminated on occasions so as to give a more characteristic picture, or may paint into their plates the blazing naphtha for more realistic effect ; but even in 1881, when Stewart last visited the shrine, it was under lock and key as now, and the engineer in charge of the Russian refinery ' relit ' the fire, only to extinguish it when he left the building, because, as he said, *he wanted all the natural petroleum gas for heating the furnaces of his works' (p. 312). Sic transit gloria ignis! — the flame has perished, a victim to the commercial value of the precious substance that gave it birth.

And one thing more. By a strange chance, the bell which once hung aloft from a hook that is still visible in the roof, and which was rung to mark the progress of the pagan ritual, now swings in the belfry of a Russian church which was in need of a signal to summon its worshipers to Sunday service.

�� �