long archway or tunnel. At the end we paused again, he watching, while
I drew difficult breath. . . .

I saw a vast amphitheatre of granite, curving away on either hand and
reaching up, tier on tier, till the tiers melted in the grey sky
overhead. The lowest tier stood twenty feet above my head; yet curved
with so lordly a perspective that on the far side of the arena, as I
looked across, it seemed almost level with the ground; while the human
figures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size of
ants about a hole. . . For there were human figures busy in the arena,
though not a soul sat in any of the granite tiers above. A million eyes
had been less awful than those empty benches staring down in the cold
dawn; bench after bench repeating the horror of the featureless carvings
by the entrance-gate--repeating it in series without end, and unbroken,
save at one point midway along the semicircle on my right, where the
imperial seat stood out, crowned like a catafalque with plumes of purple
horse-hair, and screened close with heavy purple hangings. I saw these
curtains shake once or twice in the morning wind.

The floor of this amphitheatre I have spoken of as an arena; but as a
matter of fact it was laid with riveted sheets of copper that recalled
the dead men's shelves in the Paris _morgue_. The centre had been
raised some few feet higher than the circumference, or possibly the
whole floor took its shape from the rounded hill of which it was the
apex; and from an open sluice immediately beneath the imperial throne a
flood of water gushed with a force that carried it straight to this
raised centre, over which it ran and rippled, and so drained back into
the scuppers at the circumference. Before reaching the centre it broke
and swirled around a row of what appeared to be tall iron boxes or
cages, set directly in face of the throne. But for these ugly boxes the