Oils and crude colors for painting were collected, the first from slain animals, the second from earths, crushed berries and ground minerals. It was a busy, bustling little star, whirling in a furnace heat toward the sun. The only comfortable hours upon it were in the night when Venus was ablaze before us. The years went by so fast! The clouds sank closer to the surface of the star. We began to be almost smothered in their noonday weight! The growth of the verdure of the star had changed it from a black lava ball to one mass of green and gorgeousness. The tops of the peaks alone stood above the vines. The trees were lost in their own green; moss clung to everything. The steaming sea, always boiling in spots above the lava of subterranean chasms and volcanoes, further moistened the noonday air, which, if it had been of Earth, had been utterly unendurable in its temperature. We understood that the clouds cloaked our planet. The dense air was not like the world’s atmosphere. We were close to the orbit of Venus; we feared that we should go on and burn in the flames of the sun! We appointed a day to gather with our chief friends that we might report our achievements and our successes. We were to meet at the town built by Father Renaudin, where we arranged for a grand festival to take place in his cathedral, now nearly completed. After a long day’s travel, I arrived, weary and dusty. Isabella and Father Renaudin came out to meet me. It was sunset; the last beam of sunlight had just left the scene. It was a still, sultry, purplish twilight. As we walked beneath an avenue of bloom, we heard the most enchanting music. Stepping through the bowers of green, we looked up into the sky. Above the surface, so far as to be still in the glow of the sun, which was below the horizon, we saw a multitude of white-robed people. “Is it a stampede of angels?” asked Father Renaudin. Their floating white robes and shining, flying hair were outlined on the blue sky. They were illuminated by a flood of golden sunshine. They were carrying something. We could hear their melodious song like the sound of a far-off bell. We could see wreaths of flowers, a mica-bright surface. The latter was a glistening car; therein, most gorgeous in apparel, like an Indian prince for brilliance of attire, was Regan, crowned and sceptered! He was followed at a distance, we now saw, by troops of his bird men. It was a true misery to me. Whatever this villainous Regan did was always done with so much majesty that there was no use in trying to think it was ridiculous. “He really is a monarch! It does not help me that he has made himself one!” I thought. I raged at my own stupidity. There were my people; they would have borne me and have sung for me; they would have wrought fabrics and wreaths for me, but I came on foot; I arrived dusty and tired. It was Regan first again!