"Sire, you shame Solomon. There are ever many rich and devout fools in the world. Give me a gleaming Venus, rising ruddy from the sea, rather than a lachrymose Magdalene. But what would you? I trim my Venus up in fine apparel, put a puling infant in her lap. _Ecce--Sancta Maria_." The man on the footstool smiled despite the jester’s theme, a smile that had more scorn in it than sympathy. "You verge on blasphemy," he said. "There can be no blasphemy where there is no belief." "You are over subtle, my friend." "Nay, sire, I have come by that godliness of mind when man discovers his own godhead. Let your soul soar, I say, let it beat its wings into the blue of life. Hence with superstition. Shall I subordinate my mind to the prosings of a mad charlatan such as Saul of Tarsus? Shall I, like each rat in this mortal drain, believe that some god cares when I have gout in my toe, or when I am tempted to bow to Venus?" The man on the hassock grimaced, and eyed the friar much as though he had stumbled on some being from the underworld. He was a mystic for all his manhood. "God pity your creed," he said. "God, the inflated mortal----" "Enough." "This man god of yours who tosses the stars like so many lemons." "Enough, sir friar." "Defend me from your mass of metaphor, your relics of barbarism. We, the wise ones, have our own hierarchy, our own Olympus." "On my soul, you are welcome to it," quoth the man by the altar. Balthasar’s hand worked viciously; he was strenuous towards his own beliefs, after the fashion of dreamers delirious with egotism. The very splendour of his infidelity took its birth from the fact that it was largely of his own creating. His pert iconoclasm pandered to his own vast self-esteem. "Tell me for what you live," said the man by the altar. "For beauty." "And the senses?" "Colours, odours, sounds. To breathe, to burn, and to enjoy. To be a Greek and a god." "And life?" "Is a great fresco, a pageant of passions." The Lord of Avalon sprang up and began to pace the aisle with the air of a man whose blood is fevered. For all his devoutness and his mystical fidelity, he was in too human and passionate a mood to be invulnerable to Balthasar’s sensuous shafts of fire. The Lord Flavian had come by a transcendental star-soaring spirit, an inspiration that had torched the wild beacon of romance. He was red for a riot of chivalry, a passage of desire. Turning back towards the altar, he faced the Madonna with her choir of angel girls. Fra Balthasar was watching him with a feline sleekness of visage, and a smile that boasted something of contempt. The friar considered spirituality a species of magician’s lanthorn for the cozening of fools. "What quip have you for love?" said the younger man, halting by the altar rails. Balthasar stood with poised brush. "There is some sincerity in the emotion," he said. "You are experienced?" "Sire, consider my ’habit.’"