The Celtic Twilight: The Eaters of Precious Stones

The Eaters of Precious Stones

Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the
power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and
sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day
I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular
parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious
stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and
crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew
that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist,
and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too
avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I
have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in one an infernal
Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a
curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good
deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales
go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew,
crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons of
all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and dog-like
--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at
a moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths
of the pit.

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