yet so terrible, which has, in my opinion, never been equalled in any
other book of mankind. . . . The beasts with seven heads, the signs in
the heavens, the sound of the last trumpet were well-known terrors that
haunted and enchanted my imagination.

In a book, a relic of my Huguenot ancestors, printed in the last
century, I had seen pictures of these things. It was a "History of the
Bible," and the weird pictures illustrating the visions of the Book of
Revelation, invariably, had dark backgrounds. My maternal grandmother
kept this precious book, which she had brought from the Island, under
lock and key in a cupboard in her room; and as it was still my habit to
go there at the sad hour of dusk, it was then that I usually asked her
to lend me the book, so that I might turn over its leaves as it lay upon
her lap. In the dim twilight until it was too dark to see, I gazed at
the multitude of winged angels who were flying rapidly under the curtain
of blackness which presaged the end of the world. The heavens were
darker than the earth, and in the midst of the great cloud masses, there
was visible the simple and terrifying triangle that signified Jehovah.




CHAPTER XXV.



Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious
fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without
hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine. I saluted as
old acquaintances two gods with hawk heads that were cut in profile