The whole city was of gold, {118} and the walls of emerald; the seven gates were all made out of one trunk of the cinnamon-tree; the pavement, within the walls, of ivory; the temples of the gods were of beryl, and the great altars, on which they offered the hecatombs, all of one large amethyst.

But the Muses and the Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them, though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint.

In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burning god, but time affects more subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright.

'You asked, sir, the other day what I meant to do?' 'What are we to find to amuse you?' 'As for amusement, I could kill rats as I used to do; or slaughter a hecatomb of pheasants at Babington,'here the old man winced, though the word hecatomb reconciled him a little to the disagreeable allusion.

So, in a more than different way, we shall find himwho had slain his hecatomb of heartshelpless in the power of his one great love.

Of all the great house of the Leinster Geraldines only a boy of twelve years old survived this hecatomb.