Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/272

258 at the summit of the vast subterranean hall, a stone had been removed, letting in the golden sunlight In the heart of the vault was a kind of truncated cone, so fashioned that the sun-beams, sliding along its surface, were thrown into the farthest corner of the mysterious temple. Altars, altar-steps, and niches were heavy with gold, the plaques of the precious metal being bound together by a wonderful cement, to make which liquid gold had been used. This hidden temple was, in a word, a veritable gold-mine.

On the eastern wall was an image of the divinity, wrought in massive gold, and representing a human head surrounded by shafts of light. So the old world has also represented the sun. The heavy plaque was studded with emeralds and other precious stones. The rays of the rising sun fell full upon it, filling the whole temple with a light that seemed almost supernatural, and flashing back from the gold ornaments with which walls and vault were incrusted. Gold, in the poetic language of the country, is "the tears shed by the Sun," and the Temple blazed with the precious metal. The cornices crowning the sanctuary walls were also of gold, and a frieze of gold, hammered into the stone, ran right round the hall.