In the strange bright summer night of light, lit by the sheen of the stars and the glow of the lamps, Canopus rose amid its slender obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the long quay, one beside the other. One solemn train of pilgrims after another flowed down the street to the temple of Serapis. The town was alive with the whisper of music and aglow with illumination.

It was mid-night. From the temple of Serapis heavy gong-strokes sounded, like a divine, golden thunder rolling at regular intervals under the stars. The singing processions, bathed in torchlight, streamed towards the temple.

There was a wide avenue paved with large, square stones. This avenue, or dromos, led to the sanctuary, the temenos, along a double row of immense basalt sphinxes, half woman, half lioness; half man, half bull. They were drawn up like superhuman sentinels that had turned to stone; and their great human faces stared raptly into the night. In between the sphinxes, the coloured lamps and lanterns blossomed like lotus-flowers, glowing blue, red and yellow.

The processions streamed into the dromos at pilgrims’ pace. Through the dromos they reached the first propylÆum, then the second, the third, the fourth. These consisted of a gigantic series of heavy pylons, painted with hieroglyphics: a veritable forest of pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the dense multitude of pilgrims in search of their dreams marched to the music of hymns. It marched with its steady, slow, regular, religious tread. And monotonous as the rhythm of its march was the melody of its hymn, borne upon ever the same harp-chords.

Lucius’ procession marched with the others. He walked gravely, with Catullus by his side; Thrasyllus followed; the slaves, male and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers and dancers. And Cora’s voice rose only a little higher in the ever-repeated hymn to the god Serapis.

The temple itself produced a sense of infinity. An immense fore-court, or pronaos, soared on high with its pillars, a forest of pylons crowned by the roof, with its painted hieroglyphics. The pronaos gave admittance to the sanctuary, the holy of holies, an immeasurable empty space, without image, without altar, without anything. Nevertheless as it were a mysterious sanctity descended here, because of the height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The “wings,” or pteres, the two side-walls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines in a mystic perspective, where a cloud of fragrance hovered like a conflagration. Behind this the holy of holies lost itself, the abode of the god, of Serapis; invisible the statue. A swarm of acolytes, zacori and neocori, were officiating on ascending stairs, in worship before close-drawn hyacinth curtains.

The processions divided themselves along the wings, the side-walls, as directed by the temple-keepers’ wands. It was as though a broad stream were dividing into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night, leading to terraces, the one ever higher than the other, so that they could not be overlooked. The golden gong-strokes solemnly rolled and thundered, echoing heavily and loudly.

Over the terraces, in a constant round, up and down, marched the chief priests, the hieropsalts, the hieroscopes, the hierogrammats, the pastophors, the sphagists and the stolists. The hieropsalts sang the hymns to the sacred harps; the hieroscopes prophesied from the entrails of victims; the hierogrammats guarded the secrets of the Hermetic wisdom; the pastophors carried the images of Anubis, with the dog’s head, in silver boats; the sphagists were the sacrificial priests; the stolists served the sacred images, adorned them, tended them with ever clean and perfumed hands. But among the hierogrammats strode the prophets. They had beheld the godhead face to face; they knew the past and the future, they knew the meaning of the sacred dreams. They were very holy; and the oldest of them were most holy. Whenever they approached, the people sank to the ground and kissed the pavement, with hands uplifted.

The sacred hour approached, the hour when Serapis would send the sacred dreams from heaven, out of the sun itself, when all the procession would have streamed in, when the gates of the dromos would have slammed with their ponderous monolithic doors, when the last gong-stroke would clatter away in the sacred night.

From the terraces the town, the canal, and the lake lay visible as in one golden shimmer of lights. But on the terraces themselves suddenly an incredible stillness reigned. Not a voice, not a rustle sounded from out of that multitude of thousands. And on the granite pavement the pilgrims were stretched one beside the other.

In between the rows the temple-keepers moved, the neocori. And they bent incessantly over the pilgrims and covered them with the dreaming-nets and -veils, while zacori slung the censers. A heavy, intoxicating perfume of almost stifling aromatic vapour was wafted through the air.

Suddenly, through the silence, the harps of the hieropsalts struck the sacred chord.

There was a short hymn, one single phrase, which melted away.

On the vast terraces the multitude of the thousands of pilgrims lay motionless under nets and veils, their eyes closed. Not a sound came from the illuminated city. The sacred silence reigned wide and mystic, fraught with terror, over the sea, along the starry sky, over the city and the temple. For Serapis, invisible, was rising from the underworld, to bring the dreams.

He rose in a cloud of dreams, out of the sacred, subterranean Hell, where he reigns even as Osiris reigns in high Heaven. He is Osiris himself; between him and Osiris there is no difference. He is two. While Osiris is the benevolent Almighty above, he is the benevolent Almighty below. He opposes Typhon, even as Osiris combated Typhon. Victory falls to him in the end, even as it did to Osiris.

Now he rises, in the cloud of dreams. For it is his feast, the feast of his kindly waters, which he pours in summer rains from the sacred vessels wherewith the dog’s-head of Anubis, his watchman, servant and comrade, is crowned, the waters which he pours into the sacred stream, so that it may flood sacred Egypt. Now he rises in the cloud of dreams.

The earth splits and Serapis rises from the subterranean Hell. He is everything, even as Osiris is. He is feminine, Neith, the beginning, and masculine, Ammon, eternity. He is what the last will be. And he cannot be other than the benefactor. He makes the dreams hover like butterflies around the foreheads of those who believe in him. His healing power makes whole the sick. He pours the secret of that healing into the minds of the servants of sufferers who shall dream in their masters’ stead. His dreams advise what must be done or left undone to achieve prosperity, fortune, consideration, happiness and love.

And he will make Lusius dream where to find a beloved woman who has disappeared....

In the silence the young Roman lies, covered with a gold network, like a precious mummy, straight out, his arms beside his body, his eyes shut. Near him lie all his followers.

The cloud of the perfumes is wafted over their eyes reverently closed under the veils.

The sacred silence continues, hour after hour, unbroken....