Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the
human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and
wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is
nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay.

More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to
convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a
sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a
disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression
upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary
must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it
blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the
time to continue our work.

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a
remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high
civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world,
then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest
ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did
their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the
earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian civilization has
scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will
be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the
pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his
religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill
missionaries and converts with."

By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation
after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty