He spoke, and lay silent. The dim figures in the crowded room seemed to slip away from him, his mind ceased to grasp at earthly realities, a thick darkness enveloping it and them; but the frail, wasted body still clung insatiably to life, and answered the phrases of the litany with long quavering sobs. At last it, too, resigned its hold on life. He seemed to see again, for one brief moment, the kneeling cardinals; and then to join some great current of being which swept him away beyond the consciousness of time and space. Gradually another consciousness dawned on him. Upon the golden brown clouds, which seemed to limit his vision, there was projected suddenly a huge grotesque figure; the shadow of a being more or less similar to man. "Is it a devil come to torment me?" he wondered incredulously. As the shadow advanced it became smaller; he noticed that it seemed to have talons. "It is a devil." But even as he spoke the shadow melted about him, and out of the golden mist came a strange-looking man, with a large, ungainly head, gray hair in rather long straight wisps, and lively intelligent eyes of a clear blue. The figure was absurd, gnome-like, with a pear-shaped stomach. The finger-nails were very long. The stranger bowed, smiling, as he approached, and spoke in a pleasant voice. "Monsieur, je suis charmé de vous voir. Etes-vous, par hazard, de notre petite planète terre?" "I am Gioacchino Pecci," he answered. A livelier interest was apparent on the other's face; the smile became ironical. "It is curious," he said after a pause. "It is curious that we should have reached the same paradise. On earth, Your Holiness, I was Ernest Renan." "But is this paradise?" said Leo uneasily. "Je n'ai jamais cru----" "It is the paradise of the incredulous," answered Renan. "There are many paradises: that state of being which on earth was called hell is the paradise of those given over to animal passions. The paradise of the ascetics is an eternal Shrove Tuesday, with the eternal prospect of an eternal Ash Wednesday; the case of Tantalus reversed and made pleasurable. All good Buddhists have attained Nirvana. The righteous Mahometan is distracted by the charms of innumerable _houris_. We Epicureans enjoy that moment which is eternity; and every man is justified in his own eyes." "It is charming," said Leo.