d that it evoked in him a vision and a
restless dreaming that followed after Misery.

So this dreaming showed that when Misery was dispossessed of the earth
he entered (because Misery is unchristian) into the paradise of the
pagans, where Niafer, dead now for something over a year, went
restlessly in bliss: and Misery came shortly afterward to Niafer, and
talked with her in a thin little voice. She listened willingly to this
talk of Manuel and of the adventures which Niafer had shared with
Manuel: and now that she remembered Manuel, and his clear young face and
bright unequal eyes and his strong arms, she could no longer be even
moderately content in the paradise of the pagans.

Thereafter Misery went about the heathens' paradise in the appearance of
a light formless cloud. And the fields of this paradise seemed less
green, the air became less pure and balmy, and the sky less radiant, and
the waters of the paradisal river Eridanus grew muddy. The poets became
tired of hearing one another recite, the heroes lost delight in their
wrestling and chariot racing and in their exercises with the spear and
the bow. "How can anybody expect us to waste eternity with recreations
which are only fitted to waste time?" they demanded.

And the lovely ladies began to find the handsome lovers with whom they
wandered hand in hand through never-fading groves of myrtle, and with
whom they were forever reunited, rather tedious companions.

"I love you," said the lovers.

"You have been telling me that for twelve centuries," replied the
ladies, yawning, "and too much of anything is enough."

"Upon my body, I think so too," declared the lovers. "I said it only out
of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I am as tired of
this lackadaisical idiocy as you are."

So everything was at sixes and sevens in this paradise: and when the
mischief-maker was detected, the blessed held a meeting, for it was now
the day of All Souls, on which the dead have privilege.

"We must preserve appearances," said these dead pagans, "and can have
only happy-looking persons hereabouts, for otherwise our paradise will
get a poor name, and the religion of our fathers will fall into
disrepute."

Then they thrust Misery, and Niafer also, out of the pagan paradise,
because Misery clung to Niafer in the appearance of a light formless
cloud, and there was no separating the two.

These two turned earthward together, and came to the river of sweat
cal