The knight laid aside his shoes as he was commanded, and the
hermit stood in the meanwhile as if communing with his soul in
secret prayer, and when he again moved, commanded the knight to
knock at the wicket three times. He did so. The door opened
spontaneously--at least Sir Kenneth beheld no one--and his senses
were at once assailed by a stream of the purest light, and by a
strong and almost oppressive sense of the richest perfumes. He
stepped two or three paces back, and it was the space of a minute
ere he recovered the dazzling and overpowering effects of the
sudden change from darkness to light.

When he entered the apartment in which this brilliant lustre was
displayed, he perceived that the light proceeded from a
combination of silver lamps, fed with purest oil, and sending
forth the richest odours, hanging by silver chains from the roof
of a small Gothic chapel, hewn, like most part of the hermit's
singular mansion, out of the sound and solid rock. But whereas,
in every other place which Sir Kenneth had seen, the labour
employed upon the rock had been of the simplest and coarsest
description, it had in this chapel employed the invention and the
chisels of the most able architects. The groined roofs rose from
six columns on each side, carved with the rarest skill; and the
manner in which the crossings of the concave arches were bound
together, as it were, with appropriate ornaments, were all in the
finest tone of the architecture of the age. Corresponding to the
line of pillars, there were on each side six richly-wrought
niches, each of which contained the image of one of the twelve
apostles.