There is an all-pervading smell of petrol and heavily garlic’d cooking, for these small families are still eating the minestra verde and maccaroni as prepared by Emma’s cook, Mariana.

I have said that I was at once relieved and made uneasy, but this expresses only crudely the overtones of diverse and largely subconscious feelings which comprised both the relief and the uneasiness. To begin with, the thing was so antipodally at variance with the whole chain of horrors preceding it—the change of mood from stark terror to cool complacency and even exultation was so unheralded, lightning-like, and complete!

[…] innumerable Legions of his Angels of Light, the warm gleames of whose presence is able to make the Mountains to reek and smoak, and to awake that fiery principle that lies dormient in the Earth into a devouring flame.

Molybdomancy was divination by melted lead; drops of it were allowed to fall into water, and the resulting noises and hissings listened to.