How far from gentle St. Francis and St. Catherine, and all the gracious spirits of the dead and derided ages, progress had moved! Were those things false and forgotten, those saintly ideals which had shone like lamps of faith through the night of the world? Was this the truth and were those nothing? I heard a sobbing in the shadows beneath. I looked down and perceived, immediately before the Ant, an aged man prostrate. He muttered; and, though I heard no words that I could understand, I realized that, in his blind, helpless way, he was groping toward the godhead. Then I looked up and saw something that sent the blood throbbing through my head and drew my voice from me in gasping breaths. At the edge of the platform on which I stood, out of the gloom, loomed the round body of the second cylinder. And inside, through the face of unbroken glass, I saw the sleeping face of Esther, my love of a century ago. The cap of the cylinder was half unscrewed. CHAPTER XII THE LORDS OF MISRULE I saw her eyelids quiver and half unclose an instant, and, though there was no other sign of awakening upon the mask-like face of sleep, I knew she lived. The indicators upon the dials showed that five days remained before the opening of the cylinder. And, as I stared through the glass plate, so horror-struck and shaken, some power seemed to take possession of me and make me very calm. An immense elation succeeded fear and rendered it impotent. Esther was restored to me. We had not slept through that whole century not to meet at last. How many years we two had lain side by side within our cylinders, down in the vault, I could not know. Yet there had been a sweetness behind those misty memories of my awakening as if our spirits had been in contact during those hundred years of helpless swoon. The eyelids quivered again. But for the emaciation and the dreadful pallor I might have thought she was only lightly sleeping, and would awaken at my call. The love in my heart surged up triumphantly. For her sake I meant to play the man before the Council. I meant to go there now. I think my instinct must have been the courage born of hopelessness, such as that which had carried the bishops to their death. For only a desperate stroke could win me Esther; and such a stroke must be made, should be made. With steady steps I returned to the priests’ room. The dotard was waiting for me, and he came forward, smiling and blinking into my face, searing my soul with eyes as hard as agates. “I am going to the Council,” I said quietly. He looked at me in terror. He seized me by the arm. “No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You are to go to your friends. The Council is not in session.” “It is in session. I have been held for it.”