The Place of the Lion Read Online Free PDF Page B

grosse Pfaffe , the great priest, as was once done.”
    She sniffed again; the smell had certainly recurred. In a corner Miss Wilmot moved restlessly, and then sat still. Everything was very quiet; the smell slowly faded. Damaris resumed—
    â€œBut it was that phrase which suggested to me the research with which my paper deals. You will all know that in the Middle Ages there were supposed to be various classes of angels, who were given different names—to be exact” (“and what is research if it is not exact?” she asked Mrs. Rockbotham, who nodded), “in descending order, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominations, virtues, princes, powers, archangels, angels. Now these hierarchized celsitudes are but the last traces in a less philosophical age of the ideas which Plato taught his disciples existed in the spiritual world. We may not believe in them as actually existent—either ideas or angels—but here we have what I may call two selected patterns of thought. Let us examine the likenesses between them; though first I should like to say a word on what the path was by which imaginations of the Greek seer became the white-robed beings invoked by the credulous piety of Christian Europe, and familiar to us in many paintings.
    â€œAlexandria——”
    As if the word had touched her poignantly Miss Wilmot shrieked and sprang to her feet. “Look, look,” she screamed. “On the floor!”
    Damaris stared at the floor, and saw nothing unusual. But she had no long time to look. Miss Wilmot was crouching back in her corner, still shrieking. All the room was in disorder. Mrs. Rockbotham was on her feet and alternately saying fiercely—“Miss Wilmot! Dora! be quiet!” and asking generally “Will someone take her out?”
    â€œThe snake!” Dora Wilmot shrieked. “The crowned snake!”
    So highly convinced and convincing did the words sound that there was a general stir of something remarkably like terror. Damaris herself was startled. Mr. Foster was standing close to her, and she saw him look searchingly round the room, as she had felt herself doing. Their eyes met, and she said smiling, “Do you see anything like a crowned snake, Mr. Foster?”
    â€œNo, Miss Tighe,” Mr. Foster said. “But I can’t perhaps see what she sees. Dora Wilmot may be a fool, but she’s a sincere fool.”
    â€œCan’t you get her away, Mr. Foster?” Mrs. Rockbotham asked. “Perhaps you and I together—shall we try?”
    â€œBy all means,” Mr. Foster answered. “By all means let us try.”
    The two of them crossed to the corner where Miss Wilmot, now risen from crouching and standing upright and flat against the wall, had with that change of position left off screaming and was now gently moaning. Her eyes were looking past Damaris to where at that end of the room there was an empty space before the French windows.
    Mrs. Rockbotham took her friend’s arm. “Dora, what do you mean by it?” she said firmly. “You’d better go home.”
    â€œO Elise,” Dora Wilmot said, without moving her eyes, “can’t you see? look, look, there it goes!” Her voice dropped to a whisper, and again she uttered in a tone of terror and awe: “the snake! the crowned snake!”
    Mr. Foster took her other hand. “What is it doing?” he asked in a low voice. “We can’t all see clearly. Tell me, quietly, what is it doing?”
    â€œIt is gliding about, slowly,” Miss Wilmot said. “It’s looking round. Look, how it’s moving its head! It’s so huge !”
    In the silence that had fallen on the room Damaris heard the colloquy. She was very angry. If these hysterical nincompoops were to be allowed to interrupt her careful analysis of Platonic and medieval learning, she wished she had never taken all that trouble about her paper. “Crowned snake