His
comrades having gone on strike, he left the workroom and devoted his day
to his propaganda. So successful was he that he won over to the side of
revolt fifty thousand of those guardian angels who, as Zita had
surmised, were discontented with their condition and imbued with the
spirit of the times. But lacking money, he lacked liberty, and could not
employ his time as he wished in instructing the sons of Heaven. So, too,
Prince Istar, hampered by want of funds, manufactured fewer bombs than
were needed, and these less fine. Of course he prepared a good many
small pocket machines. He had filled Theophile's rooms with them, and
not a day passed but he forgot some and left them lying about on the
seats in various cafes. But a nice bomb, easily handled and capable of
destroying many big mansions, cost him from twenty to twenty-five
thousand francs; and Prince Istar only possessed two of this kind.
Equally bent on procuring funds, Arcade and Istar both went to make a
request for money from a celebrated financier named Max Everdingen, who,
as everyone knows, is the managing director of the biggest banking
concern in France and indeed in the whole world. What is not so well
known is that Max Everdingen was not born of woman, but is a fallen
angel. Nevertheless, such is the truth. In Heaven he was named Sophar,
and guarded the treasures of Ialdabaoth, a great collector of gold and
precious stones. In the exercise of this function Sophar contracted a
love of riches which could not be satisfied in a state of society in
which banks and stock exchanges are alike unknown. His heart flamed with
an ardent love for the god of the Hebrews to whom he remained faithful
during a long course of centuries. But at the commencement of the
twentieth century of the Christian era, casting his eyes down from the
height of the firmament upon France, he saw that this country, under the
name of a Republic, was constituted as a plutocracy and that, under the
appearance of a democratic government, high finance exercised sovereign
sway, untrammelled and unchecked.

Henceforth life in the Empyrean became intolerable to him. He longed for
France as for the promised land, and one day, bearing with him all the
precious stones he could carry, he descended to earth and established
himself in Paris. This angel of cupidity did good business there. Since
his materialisation his face had lost its celestial aspect; it
reproduced the Semitic type in all its puri