As soon as we were seated the driver called out, the horses sprang forward, and we were whirled away at a speed sufficient to take one's breath, and which, till I got accustomed to it, kept me in momentary fear of an upset.

As for the wretched Alphonse, he clung with a despairing face to the side of what he called this 'devil of a fiacre', thinking that every moment was his last.

Presently it occurred to him to ask where we were going, and I told him that, as far as I could ascertain, we were going to be sacrificed by burning.

You should have seen his face as he grasped the side of the vehicle and cried out in his terror.
But the wild-looking charioteer only leant forward over his flying steeds and shouted; and the air, as it went singing past, bore away the sound of Alphonse's lamentations.
And now before us, in all its marvellous splendour and dazzling loveliness, shone out the Temple of the Sun -- the peculiar pride of the Zu-Vendi, to whom it was what Solomon's, or rather Herod's, Temple was to the Jews.

The wealth, and skill, and labour of generations had been given to the building of this wonderful place, which had been only finally completed within the last fifty years.