...of servility

We dissolve to the exterior of the Unholy of Unholies, two weeks later. Several hundreds of bearded men and slatternly women are queued up, in double file, awaiting their turn to enter the shrine. The Camera passes down the long line of dull and dirty faces, then holds on Loola and Dr. Poole, who are in the act of passing through the sliding doors.
Within all is gloom and silence. Two by two the nymphs and prancing satyrs of a few short days ago shuffle despondently past an altar, whose mighty candle is now eclipsed by a tin extinguisher. At the foot of the Arch-Vicar’s empty throne lies the heap of discarded Seventh Commandments. As the procession slowly passes, the Archimandrite in charge of Public Morals hands out to every male an apron and to every female an apron and four round patches.
‘Out through the side door,’ he repeats to each recipient.
And out through the side door, when their turn comes, Loola and Dr. Poole duly go. There, in the sunshine, a score of Postulants are busily at work, with thread and needle, stitching aprons to waist-bands, patches to trouser seats and shirt fronts.
The Camera holds on Loola. Three young seminarists in Toggenbarg cassocks accost her as she emerges into the open air.
She hands her apron to the first, a patch to each of the others. All three rapidly set to work simultaneously and with extraordinary rapidity. NO, NO and NO.
‘Turn around, please.’
Handing over her last patches, she obeys; and while the apron specialist moves away to attend to Dr. Poole, the others ply their needles so diligently that, in half a minute, she is no less forbidding from behind than when seen from in front.
‘There!’
‘And there!’
The two clerical tailors step aside and reveal a close shot of their handiwork. NO NO. Cut back to the Postulants, who express their sentiments by spitting in unison, then turn towards the door of the shrine.
‘Next lady, please.’
Wearing a look of extreme dejection, the two inseperable mulatto girls step forward together.
Cut to Dr. Poole. Aproned, and bearded with a fortnight’s growth of hair, he walks over to where Loola is waiting for him.
‘This way, please,’ says a shrill voice.
In silence they take their places at the end of yet another queue. Resignedly, two or three hundred persons are waiting to be assigned their tasks by the Grand Inquisitor’s Chief Assistant in charge of Public Works. Three-horned and robed impressively in a white Saanen soutane, the great man is sitting with a couple of two-horned Familiars at a large table, on which stand several steel filing cabinets salvaged from the offices of the Providential Life Insurance Company.

[Ape and Essence, Huxley, A.]