He tried to move, but couldn’t. He tried to think, but couldn’t either. Invisibility had conquered his mind. He was overcome with a sort of sublime horror.
Then, suddenly, a colossal voice, thundering all over the palace, as if a god were speaking, said:
‘WHAT IS THE MYSTERY OF THE BRIDGE?’
The voice could have destroyed him. It certainly made him jump deeper into the dark places, utterly fragmenting his being.
His heart stopped beating.
A long moment passed in this terror.
‘WHAT IS THE MYSTERY OF THE BRIDGE?’ the voice thundered again, quaking the palace and its deep foundations, and rocking him into the most terrifying silences of the universe.
Another long moment passed in this stillness.
He was now so tiny in that dark space that to himself he ceased to exist.
The question was asked a third time. And the voice, booming from the sky, made the whole city shake.
Then he was overwhelmed by blinding lights of ultramarine and topaz, of gold and polished bronze. The streaming radiance of stained-glass windows and the dancing beams of sunlit diamonds opened on him suddenly, enveloping him as if he had emerged upon the open fields of heaven and been embraced by a luminous host of angels.
The beauty of the lights was so awesome that he collapsed at the threshold of the palace.