malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being
damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung
heap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God.
But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.

If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond
it. That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see
humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools
who long for the power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a
human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's power they
will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to
remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The
Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his
private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the
boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had the power, Paris
would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by the
roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for
Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the
key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His
great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life
as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal
gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and
foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in
all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.

Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the