of the side street was mad with excitement, and could think of nothing
but the trophies it had snatched from the temple. Several dozen men,
black and white alike--and among them some monks and even women, had
harnessed themselves to an enormous truck, commonly used for the carriage
of beams, columns, and heavy blocks of stone, on which they had erected a
huge but shapeless mass of wood, the core, and all that remained, of the
image of Serapis; this they were dragging through the streets.

"To the Hippodrome! Burn it! Down with the idols! Look at the divine
form of Serapis! Behold the god!"

These were the cries that rent the air from a thousand throats, an ear-
splitting accompaniment to the surging storm of humanity.

The monks had torn the desecrated block from the niche in the Serapeum,
hauled it through the courts on to the steps, and were now taking it to
the arena where it was to be burnt. Others of their kidney, and some of
the Christian citizens who had caught the destructive mania, had forced
their way into the temple of Anubis, hard by the Serapeumn, where they
had overthrown and wrecked the jackal-headed idols and the Canopic gods
--four huge jars with lids representing respectively a man's head, an
ape's, a hawk's and a jackal's. They were now bearing these heads in
triumph, while others were shouldering the limbs of broken statues of
Apollo, of Athene, or of Aphrodite, or carrying the fragments in baskets
to cast them into the flames in the Hippodrome after the wooden stock of
the great Serapis. The mob had broken off the noses of all the heads,
had smeared the marble with pitch, or painted it grossly with the red
paint they had found in the writing-rooms of the Sera peum. Every one
who could get near enough to the remains of the statue, or to a fragment
of a ruined idol, spit upon it, struck it or thrust at it; and not a