Twelve men--Pomerantseff among the number--of all ages, from twenty-five to fifty-five, all dressed in evening dress, and all, so far as one could judge at such a moment, men of culture and refinement, knelt or rather lay nearly prone upon the floor, with hands linked. They were bowing forward and kissing the floor--which might account for the strange sound heard by Gerard--and their faces were illuminated with a light of hellish ecstasy--half distorted as if in pain, half smiling as if in triumph. The Abbe's eyes instinctively sought out the Prince. He was the last on the left hand side, and while his left hand grasped that of his neighbor, his right was sweeping nervously over the floor as if seeking to animate the boards. His face was more calm than those of the others, but of a deadly pallor, and the violet tints about the mouth and temples showed he was suffering from intense emotion. They were all, each one after his own fashion, praying aloud, or rather moaning, as they writhed in ecstatic adoration. "Oh, Father of Evil, come to us!" "Oh, Prince of Endless Desolation, who sitteth by the bed of suicides, we adore thee!" "Oh, creator of eternal anguish! oh, king of cruel pleasures and famishing desires, we worship thee!" "Come to us, with thy foot upon the hearts of widows, thy hair lucid with the slaughter of innocence, and thy brow wreathed with the chaplet of despair!" The heart of the Abbe turned cold and sick as these beings, hardly human by reason of their great mental exaltation, swayed before him. Suddenly--or rather the full conception of the fact was sudden, for the influence had been gradually stealing over him--he felt a terrible coldness, a coldness more piercing than any he had before experienced even in Russia; and with the coldness there came to him the certain knowledge of the presence of some new being in the room. Withdrawing his eyes from the semi-circle of men, who did not seem to be aware of his, the Abbe's, presence, and who ceased not in their blasphemies, he turned them slowly around, and as he did so they fell upon a newcomer, a thirteenth, who seemed to spring into existence from the air before his very eyes.