the Banker's eyes various ground-plans, underground-plans, and
sky-plans of Paris with red crosses indicating the points where bombs
should be simultaneously placed in cellars and catacombs, thrown on
public ways, and flung by a flotilla of aeroplanes. All the financial
establishments, and notably the Everdingen Bank and its branches, were
marked with red crosses.

The financier shrugged his shoulders.

"Nonsense! you are but wretches and vagabonds, shadowed by all the
police of the world. You are penniless. How can you manufacture all the
machines?"

By way of reply, Prince Istar drew from his pocket a small copper
cylinder, which he gracefully presented to Baron Everdingen.

"You see," said he, "this ordinary-looking box. It is only necessary to
let it fall on the ground immediately to reduce this mansion with its
inmates to a mass of smoking ashes, and to set a fire going which would
devour all the Trocadero quarter. I have ten thousand like that, and I
make three dozen a day."

The financier asked the Cherub to replace the machine in his pocket, and
continued in a conciliatory tone:

"Listen to me, my friends. Go and start a revolution at once in Heaven,
and leave things alone in this country. I will sign a cheque for you.
You can procure all the material you need to attack celestial
Jerusalem."

And Baron Everdingen was already working up in his imagination a
magnificent deal in electrophores and war-material.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHEREIN IS BEGUN THE GARDENER'S STORY, IN THE COURSE OF
WHICH WE SHALL SEE THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD UNFOLDED IN A
DISCOURSE AS BROAD AND MAGNIFICENT IN ITS VIEWS AS BOSSUET'S
DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IS NARROW AND
DISMAL

The gardener bade Arcade and Zita sit down in an arbour walled with wild
bryony, at the far end of the orchard.

"Arcade," said the beautiful Archangel, "Nectaire will perhaps reveal to
you to-day the things you are burning to know. Ask him to speak."

Arcade did so and old Nectaire, laying down his pipe, began as
follows:--

"I knew him. He was the most beautiful of all the Seraphim. He shone
with intelligence and daring. His great heart was big with all the
virtues born of pride: frankness, courage, constancy in trial,
indomitable hope. Long, long ago, ere Time was, in the boreal sky where
gleam the seven magnetic stars, he dwelt in a palace of diamond and
gold, where the air was ever tremulous with the beat