This was a smallish, square room, lit only by the two torches held in the hands of the statues one to either side of the temple door. Above the doorway was the old stone mask of a lion, worn and fretted, part of the wall. To either side, as worn and chipped, and with noses and members broken and hacked away, the two stone torchbearers still looked ancient and dignified. The anteroom was chill, in spite of the torches, and smelled of smoke. I felt the cold at work on my body; it struck up from the stone floor into my bare feet, and under the long robe of white wool I was naked. But just as the first shiver ran up my skin, the temple door opened, and in an instant all was light and colour and fire.

*   *   *

Even now after all these years, and knowing all that I have learnt in a lifetime, I cannot find it in me to break the vow I made of silence and secrecy. Nor, so far as I know, has any man done so. Men say that what you are taught when young, can never be fully expunged from your mind, and I know that I, myself, have never escaped the spell of the secret god who led me to Brittany and threw me at my father’s feet. Indeed, whether because of the curb on the spirit of which I have already written, or whether by intervention of the god himself, I find that my memory of his worship has gone into a blur, as if it was a dream. And a dream it may be, not of this time alone, but made up of all the other times, from the first vision of the midnight field, to this night’s ceremony, which was the last.

A few things I remember. More torchbearers of stone. The long benches to either side of the centre aisle where men reclined in their bright robes, the masks turned to us, eyes watchful. The steps at the far end, and the great apse with the arch like a cave mouth opening on the cave within, where, under the star-studded roof, was the old relief in stone of Mithras at the bull-slaying. It must have been somehow protected from the hammers of the god-breakers, for it was still strongly carved and dramatic. There he was, in the light of the torches, the young man of the standing stone, the fellow in the cap, kneeling on the fallen bull and, with his head turned away in sorrow, striking the sword into its throat. At the foot of the steps stood the fire-altars, one to each side. Beside one of them a man robed and masked as a Lion, with a rod in his hand. Beside the other the Heliodromos, the Courier of the Sun. And at the head of the steps, in the centre of the apse, the Father waiting to receive us.