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 CHAPTER VIII

THE SWORD OF INDRA

stood there before them all, in his nakedness and his shame, his body, with its incomplete extremities and its discoloured and nodulous surfaces, palsied a little by feebleness or emotion. His weak eyes, from the red rims of which the lashes had moulted, peered and blinked at the lights blazing upon the altar. His knees vacil- lated, as though they with difficulty sustained his weight. His unsightly hands groped at the air, with motions wavering and aimless. Then, giving vent to an inarticulate sound, he collapsed suddenly in a heap, which writhed itself into an extended prostration—his face against the flags, his arms flung out before him, his hands palm downward, upon the worn and slippery stones.

There he lay, the ruler of thousands, the head and front of a proud and priestly caste, bearing upon his misshapen shoulders the burden of an immense tradition, and reduced pitifully to this—a man, cursed beyond the common lot of men, craving abjectly from the Gods an impossible boon.