Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/244

 goddesses were unveiled as these came swaying nearer, their round faces tilted under the burden of the towering, diamond-bespangled head-gear, a sunny smile on their full, sensuous lips. The snake-like extremities of the demons writhed and twisted, the wings of the griffins were spread for flight, grim masks of monsters, showing their whetted teeth, grinned horribly, human bodies swarmed, and, in and through the mad throng, to and fro, now over, now under, elephants' trunks, the heads of horses, and the horns of bulls, stags' antlers, crocodiles' jaws, monkeys' muzzles, and tigers' throats reeled in a tangled mass.

That was no longer an edifice decorated with statuary. These were statues come to life, which, breaking through the ban laid upon them by the building, had freed themselves from its solid mass and would hardly tolerate it further, even as a support. A whole world seemed to have wakened up out of its stony sleep, and, with its thousands of figures, to be pressing forward in order to listen—to listen to the man who stood at the top of the steps, surrounded and overshadowed by the whole swarm of them, the long hanging folds of his robe bathed in a golden glow—he, the living, the one perfectly calm soul amid this restless and delusive life of the lifeless.,

It now seemed as if the stillness of the assembly grew deeper; yes, it even seemed to me that the very leaves of the trees ceased to whisper.

And the Master began tor speak.

He spoke of the temple, on the steps of which he stood, and where our ancestors had for hundreds of years worshipped Krishna in order to be inspired by the example of his heroic life to heroic action and suffering here on earth, to be strengthened by his favour, and finally to pass