chin,
"if only he had not such a commonplace, black-and-white appearance,
apart from being one of those dreadful Realists, without a scrap of
aesthetic feeling--No, I like color, and we will levy now upon the
West!"

So Miramon dealt next with a little ball of bright feathers. Then a last
helper came to them, riding on a jaguar, and carrying a large drum and a
flute from which his music issued in the shape of flames. This champion
was quite black, but he was striped with blue paint, and golden feathers
grew all over his left leg. He wore a red coronet in the shape of a
rose, a short skirt of green paper, and white sandals; and he carried a
red shield that had in its centre a white flower with the four petals
placed crosswise. Such was he who made up the tenth.

Now when this terrible dizain was completed the lord of the seven
madnesses laid fire to a wisp of straw, and he cast it to the winds,
saying that thus should the anger of Miramon Lluagor pass over the land.
Then he turned to these dreadful ten whom he had revivified from the
dustheaps and garrets of Vraidex, and it became apparent that Miramon
was deeply moved.

Said Miramon:

"You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer,
hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my
scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as
rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored!
They have discarded you utterly. Such as remember deride you, saying:

"'The brawling old lords that our grandfathers honored have perished, if
they indeed were ever more than some curious notions bred of our
grandfathers' questing, that looked to find God in each rainstorm coming
to nourish their barley, and God in the heat-bringing sun, and God in
the earth which gave life. Even so was each hour of their living touched
with odd notions of God and with lunacies as to God's kindness. We are
more sensible people, for we understand all about the freaks of the wind
and the weather, and find them in no way astounding. As for whatever
gods may exist, they are civil, in that they let us alone in our
lifetime; and so we return their politeness, knowing that what we are
doing on earth is important enough to need undivided attention.'

"Such are the folk that deride you, such are the folk that ignore the
gods whom Miramon fashioned, such are the folk whom to-day I permit you
freely to deal with after the manner of gods. Do