“_O Exiled Prince on whom was wrought such wrong! Who, conquered, still art impious and strong!_” “_O Satan have mercy on us!_” “_O Satan, patron saint of evil!_” “_O Satan take pity on our misery!_” “_O Prince of Suicide, Maker of music!_” “_O Satan have pity on us!_” “_O Father of Pain, King of Desolation, true Master of the House of Planets!_” “_O Satan have mercy on us!_” “_O Creator of black despair!_” “_O Satan take pity on us!_” Indifferent Christian as was Invern, his knees knocked at this sacrilegious Baudelairian invocation. The violet grew in intensity as the prayers of the blasphemer increased. Slowly across the sombre velvet stretched in patibulary attitude a human skeleton. No thorns crowned its grinning skull; instead a live viper wreathed about its bony nest and turned glittering eyes upon the two men. Van Zorn’s voice became a wail, calling down imprecations on earth to men of good-will. He cursed life and praised death, and his refrain was ever: “_O Satan, take pity on our misery!_” Oswald no longer heard him. With hysterical agitation he remarked the transformation of the adumbrated phantom. The skeleton had begun to carnify--its frame was first covered with ivory-white flesh, and then, with amazing velocity, a woman bourgeoned before his eyes. Gone the skull, gone the viper. In their stead emerged the delicate head of a goddess--filleted by Easter lilies--with smiling lips, enticing pose, the figure of a delicious nubility. Hazel were the wide, gold-flecked eyes that shot forthright shafts into the bosom of Oswald, and charged him with ineffable longing. The arms, exquisite in proportion, the graciously modelled torso, pierced him with an epileptic ecstasy. And the crazy tones of Van Zorn assailed his ears as if from a great distance: “_O Satan, have mercy on us!_” But the entranced youth cared little now for the diabolic litany. One idea seized and was burning up the vital spark of him. As the creature waxed in beauty he knew her--June Tilney! Yes, it was she--or was it the daughter of the devil in the Rops picture?--who drew him toward her with an irresistible caress in her eyes; eyes full of the glamour of Gehenna, eyes charged with sins without joy, penitence without hope. Forgotten her warnings before this Kundry of Golgotha. “_O Satan come down to us_,” rhythmically crooned the grovelling old man. This, Satan? This radiant maiden with the flowery nimbus and beaming eyes, her young breasts carolling a magnificat as they pointed to the zenith--Oswald stumbled to the foot of the gibbet, in his ears the throbbing of death. Her glance of cadent glory transfixed him. Scorched by the vision, some fibre snapped in his brain and he triumphantly cried: “Thou art a goddess, not the Devil.” A freezing blast overturned him, the saints of hell encircled him, as he heard Van Zorn’s grinding sobs: