Allow me to take a moment to describe the mural for you. Firstly, its form: it was spread out across the dome like the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, its whole being a broad, harmonious picture that complimented itself, telling a story throughout its united branches. It was much more than a painting, though, because it stood out from the dome like a group of completely independent sculptures, but placed so as to tell the combined story with a sort of native ease, not stressed or artificial, yet seeming as natural and beautiful as water in its flowing grace. Now I will endeavor to describe its content, though I realize that in this case the picture must be worth many millions of words.

The center of the mural was its beginning, and there a man was standing proudly upright, dressed in splendid clothes of fine linens. He held in his hand a magnificent cup of gold with a row each of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls running along its breadth. It contained a dark red liquid, which appeared to be boiling, and the man was holding it out to a fierce lion whose shoulders were four feet across and whose mouth was like a cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites of the most terrifying nature. With an evil glare in its eyes toward the man, the lion drank thirstily from the cup. Around the man and the lion there was a ring of blazing fire, leaping out of the dome like great pillars of flame, entrapping them within its narrow circle. On the outside of the fire was a group of mighty lizards and beasts, the smallest of which was larger than several elephants. Their whole attention was paid to a great fight in which they were engaged, yet their foe was naught but the reflections of themselves on the great sea which surrounded the island that held these strange sights. Several of them were dead or severely wounded at having been accidental