CHAPTER VIII
TRITON
A single large round window in the cupola above admits the light into Triton's temple.
Amidst the statues of grim, phantasmal figures which serve as the pillars of the roof sits the wonder of the primæval world, the creature most resembling man, who existed before man was yet created, the _homo diluvii_.
Even as he sits he measures four-and-twenty feet in height. His feet are disproportionately small, while his enormously long elbows rest upon his knees. His whole body is covered with a bluish-green scaly skin, like that of a sea-serpent wrinkled with age. The face resembles a man's. Its skin is of a lighter colour than the rest of the body, and is drawn quite tight and smooth round the flat, scarcely projecting nose. His forehead is round and flat. Two eyeballs, seemingly perched upon fleshy stalks, stare out of the vast eye-sockets. They are of a painfully vivid scarlet, but cold as stone and surrounded by glittering gold rims such as we meet with round the eyes of fishes. The mouth is lipless, and only visible when it is open, but then it stretches on both sides as far as the little round ears, which are covered with a thin film. A splendid gold crown, with an upright pointed horn at each corner, adorns his head. Round his loins winds a gold-embroidered cloth, fastened by a girdle set with diamonds, and beneath the cloth extends a long, comb-like backbone, terminating in a squirrel's tail.
Thus, year after year, the monster sits motionless on his golden chair. The only sign of life he gives is a sluggish twitching of his eyelids, and the hunger fit which comes upon him once a year, when he opens his mouth and roars till he is satisfied; immediately afterwards becoming dumb again, and remaining so for another year, with his hands resting on his knees, and his immovable, goggle eyes blankly staring at the stony marvels of his own temple, impervious to every outward influence.
The speech of men, the lowing of beasts, the loud-sounding music are just as inaudible to him as the amatory whispers of snails, or the philosophic discourses of the tiny ants are, perhaps, to us. He only understands the voices of the primæval beasts which stand on the same level of creation as himself.
The torpid monster owes all his power to his voice and his terrific shape. He would be incapable of killing even a child that dared to tell him it had no fear of him, and, nevertheless, the whole city trembles before him; feeds his vassals, the plant-eating mammoths, megatheriums, and iguanodons, with the first-fruits of its fields and the monster himself with the blood of its best men and its loveliest damsels; lays at his feet the gold of its mines, the pearls of its seas and the spices of its heaths, and invokes as lord and god what is nothing but a belated, primæval monster, which has survived the centuries allotted to it by Nature and abdicated its impotent, vegetating existence in favour of another and a later world, whose generations are renewed every half century, the world of short-lived, swiftly changing, greedily enjoying man.
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The ghastly feast is at an end. Tetzkatlepoka and his elect are led into Triton's temple. The heavy copper doors close behind the three hundred and sixty-five priests.
What happened within the temple no one ever knew. The roar of the monster lasted for a few minutes, and then all was still again; the doors were re-opened, and the high priest, stepping forth, informed the assembled multitude that, at the potent command of Triton, a gold-edged cloud had descended from heaven, taken up the god Tetzkatlepoka and his chosen bride, and transported them to an eternity as full of deliciousness as the last year of their earthly life had been. Let him who doubted count those who quitted the temple, and he would find there were only three hundred and sixty-five persons, or two less than the number which had entered in.
In the temple itself there was no one but the tranquil stony-eyed monster which had now closed its huge mouth and goblin eyes, like one who has eaten his fill and would fain repose.