John Constable Hadleigh Castle

John Constable Hadleigh CastleJohn Constable Flatford MillJohn William Waterhouse The Magic CircleJohn William Waterhouse PandoraJohn William Waterhouse Lamia
on a suspicion, scratched it with one of his knives. The gold peeled away, exposing a silver-grey gleam.
He'd suspected that. There simply wasn't that much gold around. The mask felt as heavy as lead because, well, it was lead. , he thought. But we said that would be shackling the river.
He dropped lightly over the balustrade on to the packed earth and walked down to the crowd.
And the full force of its belief scythed into him.
The people of Djelibeybi might have had conflicting ideas about their gods, but their belief in their kings had been unswerving for thousands of years. To Teppic it was like walking into a vat of alcohol. He felt it pouring into him until his fingertips crackled, rising up through his body until it gushed into his brain, He wondered if it had ever been all gold, and which ancestor had done it, and how many pyramids it had paid for. It was probably very symbolic of something or other. Perhaps not even symbolic of anything. Just symbolic, all by itself. One of the sacred cats was hiding under the throne. It flattened its ears and spat at Teppic as he reached down to pat it. That much hadn't changed, at least. Still no people. He padded across to the balcony. And there the people were, a great silent mass, staring across the river in the fading, leaden light. As Teppic watched a flotilla of boats and ferries set out from the near bank. We ought to have been building bridges