Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/101

 and his hands in his pockets. He gazed upon his merry-go-round as though in a dream, seemingly entranced by something new and lovely. By this time he was no longer alone. A tear-stained dirty child dragged its young nurse up to the merry-go-round and stopped in front of it with great round eyes and mouth wide open, rigid with wonderment. The little nurse, too, opened wide her eyes and stood there like one enraptured. The merry-go-round performed its circuit with a strange resplendence, sublimity, stateliness, like a festal day now whirling round with an impassioned velocity, now rocking gently like a vessel laden with the rich perfumes of India, now floating like a golden cloud high in the heavens; it seemed to soar upwards, sundered from the earth, it seemed to sing. But no, it was the orchestrion that was singing; now with the joyous voices of women mingling with a silvery rain of music falling from harps; and now it was the roar of a forest or a great organ, but from the depths of the forest birds fluted their songs and came and settled on your shoulders. Golden trumpets proclaimed the coming of a conqueror or, it might be, a whole army with flashing fiery swords. And who was it singing that glorious hymn? Thousands of people were waving branches of palm, the heavens opened, and, heralded by rolling drums, the song of God Himself descended upon the earth.