ke this, and I
have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"

"Here," said the spirit, "are the twelve million Americans killed in
their fatherland because they had not been baptized."

"My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the
hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned
to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable
monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?"

"To instruct you."

"Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, "tell me if there
have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal
and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so
many horrible cruelties."

"Yes," he said. "The Mohammedans were sullied with the same
inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked _amman_, pity, of them and
offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has
not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a
purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.

A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were
composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: _Substance
of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and
the sixteenth._ And so on in going back: _Gold and silver of Americans
slaughtered_, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with
crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.

"What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were
piled up?"

"Yes, my son."

I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the
green walks, he led me there.

"Contemplate," he said, "the heroes of humanity who were the world's
benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far
as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."

I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little
censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. "I am Numa Pompilius,"
he said to me. "I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I
taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both
more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image,
because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my
reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did
nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my
funeral: that happened