t he would go to heaven."

In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was
nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition
embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he retained
a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of
hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had
never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted.
The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth
on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limit. He
believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world
was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as
contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws
compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he
thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded
dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed
for Melmoth. The _Dies irae_ filled him with awe; he felt all the
grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of
God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through him as fire
consumes straw.

The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of the
dead?" the beadle asked him.

"I am his heir," Castanier answered.

"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.

"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the Church.)

"For the poor!"

"No."

"For repairing the Church!"

"No."

"The Lady Chapel!"

"No."

"For the schools!"

"No."

Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
irritated functionaries gave him.

Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
"What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
country?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout all
time must surely be based upon something."

"Something! Do you call God _something_?" cried his conscience. "God!
God! God!..."

The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it overwhelmed
him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds
of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in the
church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he
listened more