as Spinello's torch cast its red light upon them. At every step, his
heart beat violently against his side, and appeared as if it would mount
into his throat and choke him. But his courage did not fail, and he
ascended the Mosaic steps of the chancel, and, with his torch in one
hand, climbed up upon the altar and lifted his eyes towards the picture.
As he stood on tip-toe on the altar and passed his torch along the wall,
the mighty ranks of the fallen angels, in headlong flight before the
thunderbolts of heaven, seemed to emerge from the darkness, with the
awful form of Lucifer in the extreme rear reluctantly yielding even to
Omnipotence itself, while blasting lightnings played about his brow and
eyes, that flashed with the fires of inextinguishable fury. On first
casting his eyes over his picture, a feeling of self-complacency and
pride stole over the soul of the artist. But as he continued to gaze
with a kind of idolatry at the work of his own hands, his imagination
became excited by degrees, and life appeared to be infused into the
figure of the gigantic demon. In spite of the singular beauty of the
features, which looked like those of an archangel, the face before him
appeared to be but a mask, beneath which all the passions of hell were
struggling, gnawing, and stinging, and devouring the heart of their
possessor. "The baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and
dismay," appeared to flame in the obscure light, like the fabled
carbuncle of the Kaianian king; and the mighty limbs seemed to make an
effort to free themselves from the canvass, and spring forth upon the
floor of God's temple. As this idea rushed upon the mind of Spinello,
the wind, moaning through the aisles, and multiplied by the echoes,
sounded like the voices of wailing and desolation, which, the
imagination may suppose, mingled in dismal concert when the spirits fell
from heaven; and the artist, overpowered by the crowd of horrors which
fastened like hungry vultures upon his fancy, sprang from the altar,
and, stumbling in his haste, extinguished his torch. His imagination,