Martineau was one of that large class of people who can neither
imagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the figure
but still it remained visible. As one can continue to see a star at dawn
until one turns away. Or one blinks or nods and it is gone.
Vanished now are the beliefs that held our race for countless
generations. Where now was that Path of the Dead, mapped so clearly,
faced with such certainty, in which the heliolithic peoples believed
from Avebury to Polynesia? Not always have we had to go alone and
unprepared into uncharted darknesses. For a time the dream artist used a
palette of the doctor's vague memories of things Egyptian, he painted a
new roll of the Book of the Dead, at a copy of which the doctor had been
looking a day or so before. Sir Richmond became a brown naked figure,
crossing a bridge of danger, passing between terrific monsters, ferrying
a dark and dreadful stream. He came to the scales of judgment before the
very throne of Osiris and stood waiting while dogheaded Anubis weighed
his conscience and that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead,
crouched ready if the judgment went against him. The doctor's attention
concentrated upon the scales. A memory of Swedengorg's Heaven and Hell
mingled with the Egyptian fantasy.
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