For a long time Rabbet had been torturing him, and in despair, or perhaps for lack of a god that completely satisfied his ideas, he had at last decided for this one.
The crowd, terrified by this act of apostasy, uttered a lengthened murmur.

It was felt that the last tie which bound their souls to a merciful divinity was breaking.
But owing to his mutilation, Schahabarim could take no part in the cult of the Baal.

The men in the red cloaks shut him out from the enclosure; then, when he was outside, he went round all the colleges in succession, and the priest, henceforth without a god, disappeared into the crowd.

It scattered at his approach.
Meanwhile a fire of aloes, cedar, and laurel was burning between the legs of the colossus.

The tips of its long wings dipped into the flame; the unguents with which it had been rubbed flowed like sweat over its brazen limbs.