e.
Nevertheless, he is cruel. What does it matter? I am the last of the
prophetesses; and, after me, the end of the world will come."

_Maximilla_--"He has loaded me with his gifts. None of the others loved
me so much, nor is any of them better loved."

_Priscilla_--"You lie! I am the person he loves!"

_Maximilla_--"No: it is I!"

They fight.

Between their shoulders appears a negro's head.

_Montanus_, covered with a black cloak, fastened by two dead men's
bones:

"Be quiet, my doves! Incapable of terrestrial happiness, we by this
union attain to spiritual plenitude. After the age of the Father, the
age of the Son; and I inaugurate the third, that of the Paraclete. His
light came to me during the forty nights when the heavenly Jerusalem
shone in the firmament above my house at Pepuza.

"Ah! how you cry out with anguish when the thongs flagellate you! How
your aching limbs offer themselves to my burning caresses! How you
languish upon my breast with an inconceivable love! It is so strong that
it has revealed new worlds to you, and you can now behold spirits with
your mortal eyes."

Antony makes a gesture of astonishment.

_Tertullian_, coming up close to Montanus--"No doubt, since the soul has
a body, that which has no body exists not."

_Montanus_--"In order to render it less material I have introduced
numerous mortifications--three Lents every year, and, for each night,
prayers, in saying which the mouth is kept closed, for fear the breath,
in escaping, should sully the mental act. It is necessary to abstain
from second marriages--or, rather, from marriage altogether! The angels
sinned with women."

The Archontics, in hair-shirts:

"The Saviour said, 'I came to destroy the work of the woman.'"

The Tatianists, in hair-cloths of rushes:

"She is the tree of evil! Our bodies are the garments of skin."

And, ever advancing on the same side, Antony encounters the Valesians,
stretched on the ground, with red plates below their stomachs, beneath
their tunics.

They present to him a knife.

"Do like Origen and like us! Is it the pain you fear, coward? Is it the
love of your flesh that restrains you, hypocrite?"

And while he watches them struggling, extended on their backs swimming
in their own blood, the Cainites, with their hair fastened by vipers,
pass close to him, shouting in his ears:

"Glory to Cain! Glory to Sodom! Glory to Judas!

"Cain begot the race of the strong; Sodom terrified the e