Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/15

 METROPOLIS The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more than once, having the cathedral pulled down, as being pointless and an obstruction to the traffic in the town of fifty million inhabitants. But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was Desertus. half monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the solemn oath: If one hand from the wicked city of Metropolis were to dare to touch just one stone-of the cathedral, then they would neither repose nor fest until the wicked city of Metropolis should lie, a heap 'of ruins, at the foot of her cathedral. The Master of Metropolis used to avenge the threats which constituted one sixth of his daily mail. But he did not care to fight with opponents to whom he rendered a service by destroying them for their belief. The great brain of Metropolis, a stranger to the sacrifice of a desire, estimated the incalculable power which the sacriBced ones and martyrs sllowered upon their followers too high rather than too low. Too, the demolition of the cathedral was not yet so burning 8 question 8S to have been the object of an estimate of expe'nses. But when the moment should come, the cost of its pulling down would exceed that of the construction of Meh·opolis. The Gothics were ascetics; the Master of Metropolis knew by experience that a multi~rnilliardaire was more cheaply bought over than an ascetic. Freder wondered, not without a foreign feeling of bitterness, how many more times the great Master of Metropolis would pennit him to look on at the scene which the cathedral would present to him on every rainless day: When the sun sank at the back of Metropolis, the houses turning to mountains and ,the streets to valleys; when the stream of light, which seemed to crackle with coldness, broke forth from nIl windows, from the walls of the houses, from the rooves and from the heart of the town; when the silent quiver of electric advertisments began; when the searchlights, in all colours of the rainbow, began to play around the New Tower of Babel; when the omnibuses turned to chains of lightspitting monsters, the little motor cars to scurrying, luminous fishes in a waterless deep~sea, while from the invisible

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