They paused before one. It was
not larger than life, of ivory and gold; the colour purer than could
possibly have been imagined, highly polished, and so little injured,
that at a distance the general effect was not in the least impaired.
'Do you know that?' asked the Queen, as she looked at the statue, and
then she looked at Tancred.
'I recognise the god of poetry and light,' said Tancred; 'Phoebus
Apollo.'
'Our god: the god of Antioch, the god of the sacred grove! Who could
look upon him, and doubt his deity!'
'Is this indeed the figure,' murmured Tancred, 'before which a hundred
steers have bled? before which libations of honeyed wine were poured
from golden goblets? that lived in a heaven of incense?'
'Ah! you know all.'
'Angels watch over us!' said Tancred, 'or my brain will turn. And who is
this?'
'One before whom the pilgrims of the world once kneeled. This is the
Syrian goddess; the Venus of our land, but called among us by a name
which, by her favour, I also bear, Astarte.'
CHAPTER LIII.
_Fakredeen's Plots_
AND when did men cease from worshipping them?' asked Fakredeen of
Tancred; 'before the Prophet?' 'When truth descended from Heaven in the
person of Christ Jesus.'
'But truth had descended from Heaven before Jesus,' replied Fakredeen;
'since, as you tell me, God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and since
then to many of the prophets and the princes of Israel.
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