of sorrow and mystery and death. For
Lys believed that there were things on earth that none might understand,
things that must be nameless forever and ever, until God rolls up the
scroll of life and all is ended. We spoke of hope and fear and faith,
and the mystery of the saints; we spoke of the beginning and the end, of
the shadow of sin, of omens, and of love. The moth still lay on the
floor quivering its somber wings in the warmth of the fire, the skull
and ribs clearly etched upon its neck and body.

"If it is a messenger of death to this house," I said, "why should we
fear, Lys?"

"Death should be welcome to those who love God," murmured Lys, and she
drew the cross from her breast and kissed it.

"The moth might die if I threw it out into the storm," I said after a
silence.

"Let it remain," sighed Lys.

Late that night my wife lay sleeping, and I sat beside her bed and read
in the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue. I shaded the candle, but Lys grew
restless, and finally I took the book down into the morning room, where
the ashes of the fire rustled and whitened on the hearth.

The death's-head moth lay on the rug before the fire where I had left
it. At first I thought it was dead, but when I looked closer I saw a
lambent fire in its amber eyes. The straight white shadow it cast across
the floor wavered as the candle flickered.

The pages of the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue were damp and sticky; the
illuminated gold and blue initials left flakes of azure and gilt where
my hand brushed them.

"It is not paper at all; it is thin parchment," I said to myself; and I
held the discolored page close to the candle flame and read, translating
laboriously:

"I, Jacques Sorgue, saw all these things. And I saw the Black Mass
celebrated in the chapel of St. Gildas-on-the-Cliff. And it was said by
the Abbe Sorgue, my kinsman: for which deadly sin the apostate priest
was seized by the most noble Marquis of Plougastel and by him condemned
to be burned with hot irons, until his seared soul quit its body and fly
to its master the devil. But when the Black Priest lay in the crypt of
Plougastel, his master Satan came at night and set him free, and carried
him across land and sea to Mahmoud, which is Soldan or Saladin. And I,
Jacques Sorgue, traveling afterward by sea, beheld with my own eyes my
kinsman, the Black Priest of St. Gildas, borne along in the air upon a
vast black wing, which was the wing of his master Satan. And this