Page:Sologub Sweet Scented Name.djvu/252

 that they would henceforth meet him openly with songs rather than as before in secret and with sorrow.

We were all attired as for a festival, our skins annointed with sweet oils, our heads crowned with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs. Not one of us carried a weapon—we obeyed the advice of the oldest, who warned us not to anger him with the sight of arms as one of us had already so foolishly done. Calmly and joyfully we went forth to meet him, singing the sacred hymns. Nearer and nearer sounded his voice, and behold at last the velvet light of our torches fell upon his face.

We stood around the cage, leaving him a wide and open road to the door of it. But he did not enter and take his victim, but bounded into a crowd of our children and struck to earth my daughter Lotta.

He tore the dear body of my daughter Lotta, growling with greediness, mewing with pleasure, and I looked up suddenly and I saw that he to whom we had for ever bowed ourselves, and for whom we had sacrificed an infinite number of our tribe, was indeed a ferocious bloodthirsty beast, strong only because we were weak, dreadful only because we trembled before him.