The password and
sign, whispered to me as we left the Hall of the Novitiate, having
been given, the door parted and exposed to our view the inmost
chamber, a scene calculated to strike the eye and impress the mind not
more by its splendour and magnificence than by the unexpected
character it displayed. It represented a garden, but the boundaries
were concealed by the branching trees, the arches of flowering
creepers, the thickets of flowers, shrubs, and tall reeds, which in
every direction imitated so perfectly the natural forms that the
closest scrutiny would have been required to detect their
artificiality. The general form, however, seemed to be that of a
square entered by a very short, narrow passage, and divided by broad
paths, forming a cross of equal arms. At the central point of this
cross was placed on a pedestal of emerald a statue in gold, which
recalled at once the features of the Founder. The space might have
accommodated two thousand persons, but on the seats--of a material
resembling ivory, each of them separately formed and gathered in
irregular clusters--there were not, I thought, more than four hundred
or five hundred men and women intermingled; the former dressed for the
most part in green, the latter in pink or white, and all wearing the
silver band and star.
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