To this last point the
hermit directed his steps, which seemed to falter as he
approached it.
"Put off thy shoes," he said to his attendant; "the ground on
which thou standest is holy. Banish from thy innermost heart
each profane and carnal thought, for to harbour such while in
this place were a deadly impiety."
The knight laid aside his shoes as he was commanded, and the
hermit stood in the meanwhile as if communing with his soul in
secret prayer, and when he again moved, commanded the knight to
knock at the wicket three times. He did so. The door opened
spontaneously--at least Sir Kenneth beheld no one--and his senses
were at once assailed by a stream of the purest light, and by a
strong and almost oppressive sense of the richest perfumes. He
stepped two or three paces back, and it was the space of a minute
ere he recovered the dazzling and overpowering effects of the
sudden change from darkness to light.
When he entered the apartment in which this brilliant lustre was
displayed, he perceived that the light proceeded from a
combination of silver lamps, fed with purest oil, and sending
forth the richest odours, hanging by silver chains from the roof
of a small Gothic chapel, hewn, like most part of the hermit's
singular mansion, out of the sound and solid rock.
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