itself.

The evening of the fourth day Baruch Mendoza was more pallid than his
robe; his eyes looked like twin stars, they so glittered, and the fire
in them was hardly of this earth. His cheek-bones started through the
skin; beard and hair hung in damp masses about the ghastly face and
head; his lips were parted in a contemptuous grin, and there was a
strained, listening look on the countenance: he was listening for the
key that was slaying him, and he saw it now, saw it in the flesh, a
creeping, crawling, shapeless thing that slowly strangled his life. All
his soul had flown to his ears, all his senses were lodged in the one
sense of hearing, and as he heard again and again the Lord's Prayer in
the key of B the words that compose it separated themselves from the
tone and assumed an individual life. The awful power of the spoken word
assailed him, and "Our Father who art in heaven" became for Baruch a
divine gigantic cannibal, devouring the planets, the stars, the
firmament, the cosmos, as he created them. The heavens were copper, and
there gleamed and glared the glance of an eyeball burning like a sun,
and so threatening that the spirit of the atheist was consumed as a
scroll in the flame. He cried aloud, "If there is a God, let Him come
from on high and save me!" The drum sounded more fiercely, a monk
moistened with water the tortured man's lips, and Baruch groaned when
the cowled choir chaunted, "Pater noster, qui es in coelis!"

"Give us this day our daily bread." He asked himself if he had ever
known hunger and thirst; then other letters of fire came into his brain,
but through the porches of his ears. "And forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us." Could he, he whispered to
his soul--could he forgive these devils that sang like angels? He almost
shivered in his attempt to smile; and loathing life heard with sardonic
amusement: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!"

"Amen," groaned Baruch Mendoza. Again the drum boomed dolorously, and
monkish voices intoned: "Pater noster, qui es in coelis!"

There was no dawn, no eve in this brassy hell of music. The dripping
monotone of voices, the dreary pelting of the drum never ceased; and the
soul of the unbeliever was worn slowly away. The evening of the seventh
day the Grand Inquisitor, standing at his side, noticed with horror the
resemblance to the Master, and piously crossed himself.

Seeing the end was nigh, for there