"Do you wish to see him?" A horse's hoof shows itself, the devil takes the saint on his horns and bears him through space, through the heavens of modern science, wherein the planets are as abundant as grains of dust. And the firmament expands with the thoughts of Antonius. "Higher, higher!" he exclaims. Infinity reveals itself to his gaze. Timidly he inquires of the devil for God. The devil answers him with new queries, new doubts. "What you call form is perhaps but a delusion of your senses," he says; "what you call substance is only a conceit of your mind. Who knows if the world is not an eternal stream of facts and occurrences, the semblance the only truth, the illusion the only reality!" "Adore me!" suddenly exclaims the devil, "and curse the mockery you have called God!" He vanishes, and Antonius awakens, lying on his back on the brink of his rock. But his teeth are chattering, he is ill; he has no longer either bread or water in his hut, and his hallucinations begin anew. He loses himself in the swarm of fabulous animals that throng about him, the fantastic monsters of the earth. He finds himself on a strand amid the inhabitants and plants of the sea and land, and he can no longer distinguish plants and animals. The twining plants wind and curve like serpents; he confuses the vegetable and mineral world with that of mortals. The gourds look like human breasts; the Babylonian tree Dedaim, bears human heads as its fruit; pebbles seem like skulls; diamonds glitter like eyes. He experiences the pantheistic yearning to blend with universal nature, and this is his last wail:-- "I have a desire to fly, to swim, to bark, to roar, to howl. Would that I had wings, a homy plate, a shell, a beak! Would that I could coil my body like a serpent, divide myself, be in everything, be wafted around like a perfume, unfold myself like a plant, sound like a tune, shine like a light, conceal myself in all forms and penetrate every atom!" The night is at an end. It was only a new incubus. The sun rises, and in its disk the face of Christ beams upon him. Then follows the last discreet irony of the author. Antonius makes the sign of the cross, and begins anew the prayer that was interrupted by these visions.