ing on the bed, smoking a huge pipe,
carelessly scorching pillows, sheets, and coverlets. They embraced
Maurice, and announced their departure. Their faces shone with happiness
and courage. Alone, the inspired author of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_,
shed tears and raised his terrified gaze to heaven. The Kerub forced him
into the party of rebellion by setting before him two alternatives:
either to allow himself to be dragged from prison to prison on earth, or
to carry fire and sword into the palace of Ialdabaoth.

Maurice perceived with sorrow that the earth had scarcely any hold over
them. They were setting out filled with immense hope, which was quite
justifiable. Doubtless they were but a few combatants to oppose the
innumerable soldiers of the sultan of the heavens; but they counted on
compensating for the inferiority of their numbers by the irresistible
impetus of a sudden attack. They were not ignorant of the fact that
Ialdabaoth, who flatters himself on knowing all things, sometimes allows
himself to be taken by surprise. And it certainly looked as if the first
attack would have taken him unawares had it not been for the warning of
the archangel Michael. The celestial army had made no progress since its
victory over the rebels before the beginning of Time.

As regards armaments and material it was as out of date as the army of
the Moors. Its generals slumbered in sloth and ignorance. Loaded with
honours and riches, they preferred the delights of the banquet to the
fatigues of war. Michael, the commander-in-chief, ever loyal and brave,
had lost, with the passing of centuries, his fire and enthusiasm. The
conspirators of 1914, on the other hand, knew the very latest and the
most delicate appliances of science for the art of destruction. At
length all was ready and decided upon. The army of revolt, assembled by
corps each a hundred thousand angels strong, on all the waste places of
the earth--steppes, pampas, deserts, fields of ice and snow--was ready
to launch itself against the sky. The angels, in modifying the rhythm of
the atoms of which they are composed, are able to traverse the most
varied mediums. Spirits that have descended on to the earth, being
formed, since their incarnation, of too compact a substance, can no
longer fly of themselves, and to rise into ethereal regions and then
insensibly grow volatilized, have need of the assistance of their
brothers, who, though revolutionaries like themselves, neverthel