n say--weighed in turn the earth and all the
planets before he set the burden of them in the abysses of the air; then
he hung up in heaven the gilded scales: on these men have modelled their
balances and scale pans.

To the north shines the circle of the starry Sieve,141 through which God,
as they say, gifted grains of corn, when he cast them down from heaven for
Adam our father, who had been banished for his sins from paradise.

Somewhat higher, David's Car,142 ready for mounting, turns its long pole
towards the north star. The old Lithuanians know, concerning this chariot,
that the populace err in calling it David's, since it is the Angel's Car.
On it long ago rode Lucifer, when he summoned God to combat, rushing at
full gallop along the Milky Way towards the threshold of heaven, until
Michael threw him from his car, and cast the car from the road. Now it is
stretched out ruined amid the stars; the Archangel Michael will not allow
it to be repaired.

And it is also well known among the old Lithuanians--but this knowledge
they probably derived from the rabbins--that the huge, long Dragon of the
zodiac, which winds its starry coils over the sky, and which astronomers
erroneously christen a serpent, is not a serpent, but a fish, and is named
Leviathan. Long ago it dwelt in the seas, but after the deluge it died for
lack of water; hence on the vault of heaven, both as a curiosity and as a
reminder, the angels hung up its dead remains. In the same way the priest
of Mir has hung up in his church the ribs and shanks of giants that have
been dug from the earth.143

Such stories of the stars, which he had conned from books or learned from
tradition, did the Seneschal relate. Though in the evening the old
Seneschal's sight was weak, and he could see nothing in the sky through
his spectacles, yet he knew by heart the name and form of every
constellation; with his finger he indicated their places and their paths.

To-day they listened little to him, and gave no heed at all to the Sieve,
or to the Dragon, or even to the Scales; to-day the eyes and thoughts of
all were absorbed by a new guest, recently observed in the sky. This was a
_comet_ of the first magnitude and power,144 which had appeared in the
west and was flying towards the north; with a bloody eye it looked askance
upon the Chariot, as though it wished to seize the empty place of Lucifer;
behind, it threw out a long tail, and with it encircled a third part of
the sk