t the Devil and
Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou
not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast,
trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it
come, then; I will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there
rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear
away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit,
almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed:
not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed
Defiance.

"Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively
through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that
my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis
recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in
Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point
of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: 'Behold, thou art
fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's);' to which
my whole Me now made answer: '_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever
hate thee!'

"It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth,
or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a
Man."

CHAPTER VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE.

Though, after this "Baphometic Fire-baptism" of his, our Wanderer
signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, "Indignation
and Defiance," especially against things in general, are not the most
peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no
longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed
centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed
and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its
Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus
gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the
remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless
by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might
say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the
old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received
peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its
howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth,
might, in the mean while, become only the more tumultuous, a