"Last night, being anointed with balm, I was transported to the tower of Notre Dame, and I beheld the elemental spirits that carry the prayers of men to the angels, and they in their turn, flying up towards the highest heaven, bring them to the Throne of God. And everywhere the sky was strewn with glittering stars. Suddenly I saw the figure of a man that seemed all blackened and charred, rising from a funeral pile. Mounting up towards me, this figure took its place beside me on the tower. I saw that it was Claes, just as he was in life, dressed in his charcoal-burner's clothes. He asked me what I was doing there on the tower of Notre Dame. 'And you,' I asked in my turn, 'whither are you off to, flying in the air like a bird?' 'I am going,' he answered, 'to judgment. Hear you not the angel's trump that summons me?' I was quite close to him, and could feel the very substance of his spiritual body--not hard and resisting to the touch like the bodies of those that are alive, but so rarefied that to come up against it was like advancing into a kind of warm mist. And at my feet stretched out on every side the land of Flanders, with a few lights shining here and there, and I said to myself: 'They that rise early and work late, surely they are the blessed of God!' And all the time I could hear the angel's trumpet calling through the night. And presently I saw another shade mounting up towards me from the land of Spain. This was an old man and decrepit, with a protruding chin, and quince jam all oozing from the corners of his lips. "On its back it wore a cloak of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and on its head an imperial crown, and it kept nibbling a piece of anchovy which it carried in one hand, while in the other hand it clutched a tankard of beer. I could see that this spirit was tired out and had come to the tower of Notre Dame to rest itself. Kneeling down, I addressed it in these words: 'Most Imperial Majesty, of a truth I revere you, yet I know not who you are. Whence come you? And what was your position in the world?' 'I come,' answered the shade, 'from Saint Juste in the country of Estramadoure. I was the Emperor Charles the Fifth.' 'But,' said I, 'whither, pray, are you going on such a cold night as this, and over these clouds that are all heavy and charged with hail?' 'I go,' answered the shade, 'to judgment.'