eyes are dazzled."

And the voice answered:

"Very true, there is naught to be seen there but flashing fire. No Latin
letters, nor Arabic, nor Greek, no cabalistic signs, can ever express
this device; and no hand is there may trace it in characters of flame on
palace walls.

"Friend, never set your heart on reading what is not written. Only know
this, that whatsoever a man has thought or believed in his brief
lifetime is a parcel of this infinite Truth; and that, even as much dirt
and disorder enter into what we call the order of nature, that is the
clean and proper ordering of the universe, so the maxims of knaves and
fools, who make the mass of mankind, participate in some sort in that
general and universal Truth-which is absolute, everlasting and divine.
Which makes me sore afraid, by the by, it may very like not exist at
all."

And with a great burst of mocking laughter, the voice fell silent.

Then the holy man saw a long leg stretched out, in red hose, and inside
the shoe the foot seemed cloven and like a goat's, only much larger. And
it gave the wheel of light so shrewd a kick on the rim of its felloe,
that sparks flew out as they do when the blacksmith smites the iron with
his hammer, and the great wheel leapt into the air to fall far away,
broken into fragments. Meantime the air was filled with such piercing
laughter that the holy man awoke.

And in the livid gloom of the dungeon, he thought sadly:

"I have no hope or wish left to know Truth, if, as has just been
manifested to me, she only shows herself in contradictions and
inconsistencies. How shall I dare by my death to be witness and martyr
of what men must believe, now the vision of the wheel of the universe
has made me see how every particular falsehood is a parcel of general
Truth, absolute and unknowable? Why, O my God, have you suffered me to
behold these things, and let it be revealed to me before my last sleep,
that Truth is everywhere and that she is nowhere?"

And the holy man laid his head in his hands and wept.

XV

THE JUDGMENT

Fra Giovanni was led before the Magistrates of the Republic to be judged
according to the laws of Viterbo. And one of the Magistrates said to the
guards:

"Take his chains off him. For every person accused should appear freely
before us."

And Giovanni thought:

"Why does the Judge pronounce words that are not straight?"

And the first of the Magistrates began to question the holy man, and
said to