was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so
much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a
moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such a strange
question. Then he said:

"The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and
an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse
that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the difference between
Caesar and this?"

I said, "One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the
interval between them are not comparable."

"You have answered your own question," he said. "I will expand it. Man
is made of dirt--I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum
of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow;
he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the
Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the
Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by
itself."

He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at
that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely
knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about
it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest
finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it.
For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then
Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a
cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some
very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was