By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By horror we,
that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery
fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to
a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were
taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their
channels again; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from
the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our
horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips,
as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us.--
"Whither has the infant fled?--is the young child caught up to God?"
Lo! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the
clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to
man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face was
trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening dawn that
now streamed _through_ the windows? Was it from the crimson robes
of the martyrs painted _on_ the windows? Was it from the bloody
bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that crimson radiance,
rose the apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure.
The child it was--grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of
the altar, voiceless she stood--sinking, rising, raving, despairing;
and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, streamed upwards
from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that
dreadful being who should have baptized her with the baptism of death.
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