But while he stays there, things of black magic happen. Nor is that strange. Anyone familiar with the legend embodied in “Tannhäuser” might expect to find that all things abhorred by Christians are practiced in the land of Venus, the Cocaigne of Anaitis. And so we are able truly to understand the episode, occurring while Jurgen abides in this country of Cocaigne, to which so much attention has been directed by Mr. Sumner (chap. 22, pp. 151-158). This Moon Goddess (159) “who ruled not merely in Cocaigne but furtively swayed the tides of life everywhere the Moon keeps any power over tides” (159) had but one mission, “to divert and to turn aside and deflect” (159). Goethe puts into the mouth of Mephistopheles the tremendous words, “I am the spirit that always denies”. The episode in the present book simply shows forth the action of the spirit that denies, for to deflect is to deny. What occurs in the passage to which Mr. Sumner objects is nothing but a repetition of the mediæval practice of the Black Mass, the Devil’s Mass. It is certainly not against the dictates of literature to publish what the author conceives as a detail of the mysterious Black Mass; for if so then the novel, “Black Diamonds”, by the famous Hungarian novelist of a generation ago, Maurice Jokai, would never have been allowed in translation. And that the ceremony in question was a Black Mass is clear after we read, not merely the words describing the ceremony itself, but the references to it that follow. In the inner sanctuary we find a toad nailed to a cross (157). The incident occurred “on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist” (159), in other words Midsummer Night’s Eve, at which time, according to mediæval tradition, the powers of darkness are allowed abroad.[6] Let us remember that in the country of Venus “the Church is not Christian”, and the law is “do that which seems good to you” (161). The very goddess herself was “created by perversity, and everyone knows that it is the part of piety to worship one’s creator in fashions acceptable to that creator” (165). That goddess, whose mission it was to divert, to deny, naturally enjoyed “the ceremony of God-baiting” as Jurgen calls it (157). Tannhäuser abode in the Venusberg, and nobody has dreamed of forbidding Wagner’s opera based on that. Jurgen lived in precisely the same place, but simply described with more cynicism. Really, we have nothing but “Tannhäuser” as it would have been written by Heine, if he had happened to take up the German legend in the spirit of his own cynical wit. Wagner took it seriously, and Mr. Cabell does not take it seriously; that is all the difference.