ess,
stayed behind in the Empyrean and remained, not immaterial (for all is
matter in the Universe), but gloriously untrammelled and diaphanous.
Certes, it was not without painful anxiety that Arcade, Istar, and Zita
prepared themselves to pass from the heavy atmosphere of the earth to
the limpid depths of the heavens. To plunge into the ether there is need
to expend such energy that the most intrepid hesitate to take flight.
Their very substance, while penetrating this fine medium, must in itself
grow fine-spun, become vaporised, and pass from human dimensions to the
volume of the vastest clouds which have ever enveloped the earth. Soon
they would surpass in grandeur the uttermost planets, whose orbits they,
invisible and imponderable, would traverse without disturbing.

In this enterprise--the vastest that angels could undertake--their
substance would be ultimately hotter than the fire and colder than the
ice, and they would suffer pangs sharper than death.

Maurice read all the daring and the pain of the undertaking in the eyes
of Arcade.

"You are going?" he said to him, weeping.

"We are going, with Nectaire, to seek the great archangel to lead us to
victory."

"Whom do you call thus?"

"The priests of the demiurge have made him known to you in their
calumnies."

"Unhappy being," sighed Maurice.

Arcade embraced him, and Maurice felt the angel's tears as they dropped
upon his cheek.

CHAPTER XXXV

AND LAST, WHEREIN THE SUBLIME DREAM OF SATAN IS UNFOLDED

Climbing the seven steep terraces which rise up from the bed of the
Ganges to the temples muffled in creepers, the five angels reached, by
half-obliterated paths, the wild garden filled with perfumed clusters of
grapes and chattering monkeys, and, at the far end thereof, they
discovered him whom they had come to seek. The archangel lay with his
elbow on black cushions embroidered with golden flames. At his feet
crouched lions and gazelles. Twined in the trees, tame serpents turned
on him their friendly gaze. At the sight of his angelic visitors his
face grew melancholy. Long since, in the days when, with his brow
crowned with grapes and his sceptre of vine-leaves in his hand, he had
taught and comforted mankind, his heart had many times been heavy with
sorrow; but never yet, since his glorious downfall, had his beautiful
face expressed such pain and anguish.

Zita told him of the black standards assembled in crowds in all the
waste pla