“Ringing applause followed these words, for his simplicity and courtesy were wonderful; he had given voice to the thoughts of all, yet with such sweet humility that never had my love for him before reached such limits. “Then from near at hand Plucritus spoke, leaning back half indolently, a faint smile hovering on his lips. “‘Are we to raise gods from soil?’ he asked. ‘Nature will groan beneath the burden and cast it on to us.’ “Silence followed, till a brother of Vestasian, he who stood before the Cross and appeared in the hall of Pilate, said, ‘Let Nature provide the flesh and blood, we will supply the rest.’ “Next Gabriel rose. “‘First let us hear Vestasian through,’ he suggested. ‘This is a project of which I for one would hear still more.’ “Vestasian rose and made that speech which in the annals of Heaven is so famous. I will give it briefly, leaving out much that he put in. “‘I advise that we raise from the dust of earth beings like ourselves, inferior only in power, eternity, and infinite conception of wisdom. They should be the greatest living ornament of Nature, exceeding everything. Their lives should be a span of golden happiness and pleasure, as like our own as possible. But being frail, and merely the experimental plaything of the Godhead, I would withhold from them the knowledge of the higher state of good and evil, and I would bind them in to a phase of life having a gentle end.’ “Thus much Vestasian in simple words and few, a mixture of kindness and pride, and an indulgence which lacked wisdom, having nothing higher for its aim than a semblance of what was not.