“Do not speak, Josaphat! It is really of no importance ... a coincidence.... The carving was, perhaps, damaged—I do not know! Believe me: it is of no importance. “But now a voice yelled out: “‘Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ “It was the voice of Desertus, the monk. His voice was like a knife. The voice peeled bare my spine. Deathly stillness reigned in the church. Among all the thousands round about, not one seemed to breathe. They were kneeling and their faces, pale masks of horror, were turned towards the preacher. “His voice flew through the air like a spear. “‘Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ “Before me, by a pillar, stood a young man, once a fellow member of mine, of the ‘Club of the Sons.’ If I had not personally experienced how vastly human faces can change, in a short time, I should not have recognised him. “He was older than I, and was, it is true, not the happiest of us all, but the gayest. And the women loved him and feared him equally, for he was in no way to be captivated, either by laughter or by tears. Now he had the thousand-year-old face of men, who, yet living, are dead. It was as if a cruel executioner had removed his eye-lids, that he was condemned never to sleep, so that he was perishing of weariness. “But it surprised me more than all to find him here, in the cathedral, for he had been, all his life long, the greatest of scoffers. “I laid my hand on his shoulder. He did not start. He only just turned his eyes—those parched eyes. “I wanted to ask him: ‘What are you doing here, Jan?’ But the voice of the monk, that awful, spear-hurling voice, threw its sharpness between him and me.... The monk Desertus began to preach....” Freder turned around and came to Josaphat with violent haste, as though a sudden fear had taken him. He sat down by his friend, speaking very rapidly, with words which tumbled over each other in streaming out. At first he had hardly listened to the monk. He had watched his friend, and the congregation which was still kneeling, head pressed to head. And, as he looked at them, it seemed to him as though the monk were harpooning the congregation with his words, as though he were throwing spears, with deadly, barbed hooks, right down into the most secret soul of the listeners, as though he were tugging groaning souls out of bodies, quivering with fear. “Who is she, who has laid fire to this city? She is herself a flame—an impure flame. You were given of a brand, might. She is a fiery blaze over man. She is Lilith, Astarte, Rose of Hell. She is Gomorrha, Babylon—_Metropolis!_ Your own city—this fruitful, sinful _City!_—has born this woman from out the womb of its hell. Behold her! I say unto you: Behold her! She is the woman who is to appear before the judgment of the world. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.