g what Satan was saying. I was
ashamed, for it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race
and trivial. Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and to
have a clever woman presiding over the festivities would double the
attractions of the place.

"But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?" asked Marget.

"Yes," said Satan indifferently; "some even call him a Prince, out of
compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything,
rank nothing."

My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes came along and licked it; by
this act a secret was revealed. I started to say, "It is all a mistake;
this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles on her tongue
point inward, not outward." But the words did not come, because they
couldn't. Satan smiled upon me, and I understood.

When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and
hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home. I was
thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail
was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were
in the jail. We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was
there, and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or
two hanging on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and
dreadful. There were people there--and executioners--but as they took
no notice of us, it meant that we were invisible. A young man lay bound,
and Satan said he was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners
were about to inquire into it. They asked the man to confess to the
charge, and he said he could not, for it was not true. Then they drove
splinter after splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the
pain. Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be
whisked out of there. I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived
me, and we walked toward my home. I said it was a brutal thing.

"No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a
misuse of that word; they have not deserved it," and he went on talking
like that. "It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming
virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals,
which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the
monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he
does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing
as wrong. And he does not inflict p