at are so soon
exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the
enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there
is no limit. He believed in God, and the spell that gave him the
treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasures
themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of
diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of
the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to him
from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he
listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The _Dies irae_ filled
him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul
trembling before the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring
flame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.

The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of the
dead?" the beadle asked him.

"I am his heir," Castanier answered.

"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.

"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the
Church.)

"For the poor!"

"No."

"For repairing the Church!"

"No."

"The Lady Chapel!"

"No."

"For the schools!"

"No."

Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
irritated functionaries gave him.

Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
"What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
country?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout
all time must surely be based upon something."

"Something! Do you call God _something_?" cried his conscience. "God!
God! God!..."

The word was echoed and reechoed by an inner voice, till it overwhelmed
him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant
sounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in
the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as
he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he
looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The
melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope;
but it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a
ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who are
crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with
unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause,
muttering to himself, ca