th it."

Topandy gazed at the heavens through the new telescope with great
interest.

"Ah," he remarked in a tone of surprise. "This is a splendid instrument;
the star-mist thins, some tiny stars appear out of the ring."

"And the mass itself?"

"That remains mist. Not even this telescope can disperse its atoms."

"Well, shall we not experiment with Chevalier's microscope now?"

"That is a good idea; get it ready."

"What shall we put under it? A rhinchites?"

"That will do."

Lorand lit the spirit-lamp, which threw light on the subject under the
magnifying glass; then he first looked into it himself, to find the
correct focus. Enraptured, he cried out:

"Look here! That fabled armor of Homer's _Iliad_ is not to be compared
with this little insect's wing-shields. They are nothing but emerald and
enamelled gold."

"Indeed it is so."

"And now listen to me: between the two wings of this little insect there
is a tiny parasite or worm, which in its turn has two eyes, a life, and
life-blood flowing in its veins, and in this worm's stomach other worms
are living, impenetrable to the eye of this microscope."

"I understand," said the atheist, glancing into Lorand's eyes. "You are
explaining to me that the immensity of the world of creation reaching to
awful eternity is only equalled by the immensity of the descent to the
shapeless nonentity; and that is your God!"

The sublime calm of Lorand's face indicated that that was his idea.

"My dear boy," said Topandy, placing his two hands on Lorand's shoulder,
"with that idea I have long been acquainted. I, too, fall down before
immensity, and recognize that we represent but one class in the upward
direction towards the stars, and one degree in the descent to the moth
and rust that corrupt; and perhaps that worm, that I killed in order to
take rapt pleasure in its wings, thought itself the middle of eternity
round which the world is whirling like Plato's featherless two-footed
animals; and when at the door of death it uttered its last cry, it
probably thought that this cry for vengeance would be noted by some one,
as when at Warsaw four thousand martyrs sang with their last breath,
'All is not yet lost.'"

"That is not my faith, sir. The history of the ephemeral insect is the
history of a day,--that of a man means a whole life; the history of
nations means centuries, that of the world eternity; and in eternity
justice comes to each one in irremediable and unalter