e to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars
of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were
humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any
fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because
you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them
being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of
virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark
will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be
really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wall-paper."

He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of
his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied that religion
produced humility or humility a simple joy: but he admitted both. He
only said, "But shall I not find in evil a life of its own? Granted that
for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks will go out: will not the
expanding pleasure of ruin..."

"Do you see that fire?" I asked. "If we had a real fighting democracy,
some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are."

"Perhaps," he said, in his tired, fair way. "Only what you call evil I
call good."

He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps
swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the
low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but
the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled: then I heard the voice of
one of the vilest of his associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know."
And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every
syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, "I tell you I
have done everything else. If I do that I shan't know the difference
between right and wrong." I rushed out without daring to pause; and as
I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hell or the furious love
of God.

I have since heard that he died: it may be said, I think, that he
committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with
tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have never
known, or even dared to think, what was that place at which he stopped
and refrained.

XXXV. A Glimpse of My Country

Whatever is it that we are all looking for? I fancy that it is really
quite close. When I was a boy I had a fancy that Heaven or Fairyland or
whatever I called it, was immediately behind