Psyche and the Sphinx
[Frontispiece
Brooke Street, Holborn Bars, E.C.
1908
Psyche
Chapter I
Gigantically massive, with three hundred towers, onthe summit of a rocky mountain, rose the king’s castle high intothe clouds.
But the summit was broad, and flat as a plateau, and the castlespread far out, for miles and miles, with ramparts and walls andpinnacles.
And everywhere rose up the towers, lost in the clouds, and thecastle was like a city, built upon a lofty rock of basalt.
Round the castle and far away lay the valleys of the kingdom,receding into the horizon, one after the other, and ever and ever.
Ever changing was the horizon: now pink, then silver; now blue, thengolden; now grey, then white and misty, and gradually fading away, andnever could the last be seen. [2]
In clear weather there loomed behind the horizon always anotherhorizon. They circled one another endlessly, they were lost in thedissolving mists, and suddenly their silhouette became more sharplydefined.
Over the lofty towers stretched away at times an expanse ofvariegated clouds, but below rushed a torrent, which fell like acataract into a fathomless abyss, that made one dizzy to look at.
So it seemed as if the castle rose up to the highest stars and wentdown to the central nave of the earth.
Along the battlements, higher than a man, Psyche often wandered,wandered round the castle from tower to tower, from wall to wall, witha dreamy smile on he