the soft contours and dimpling
smiles of childhood with its rosy lights and pearly tints. Nor do they
all adorn themselves with eternal youth, that indefinable beauty that
Greek art in its decline has imparted to its most lovingly handled
marbles, and whereof Christian painters have so often timidly essayed to
give us veiled and softened imitations. In some of them the chin glows
with tufts of hair, and the limbs are furnished with such vigorous
muscles that it seems as if serpents were writhing beneath the skin.
Some have no wings, others possess two, four, or six; others again are
formed entirely of conjoined pinions. Many, and these not the least
illustrious, take the form of superb monsters, such as the Centaurs of
fable; nay, one may even see some who are living chariots, and wheels of
fire. A member of the highest celestial hierarchy, Istar belonged to the
choir of Cherubim or Kerubs who see above them the Seraphim alone. In
common with all the angelic spirits of his rank he had formerly borne in
Heaven the bodily shape of a winged bull surmounted by the head of a
horned and bearded man, and carrying between his loins the attributes of
generous fecundity. He was vaster and more vigorous than any animal on
earth, and when he stood erect with outspread wings he covered with his
shadow sixty archangels.

Such was Istar in his native home. There he radiated strength and
sweetness. His heart was full of courage and his soul benevolent.
Moreover, in those days he loved his lord. He believed him to be good
and yielded him faithful service. But even while guarding the portals of
his Master, he used to ponder unceasingly on the punishment of the
rebellious angels and the curse of Eve. His mind worked slowly but
profoundly. When, after a long course of centuries, he persuaded himself
that Ialdabaoth in creating the world had created evil and death, he
ceased to adore and to serve him. His love changed to hatred, his
veneration to contempt. He shouted his execrations in his face, and fled
to earth.

Embodied in human form and reduced to the stature of the sons of Adam,
he still retained some characteristics of his former nature. His big
protruding eyes, his beaked nose, his thick lips framed in a black beard
which descended in curls on to his chest recalled those Cherubs of the
tabernacle of Iahveh, of which the bulls of Nineveh afford us a pretty
accurate representation. He bore the name of Istar on earth as well as
in H