"Wo be unto me if such a confession proceed out of my lips!" said the friar: "Who can be greater than he who builded the stories of heaven, and laid the foundations of this earth below; who lighted up the sun, sending him abroad in brightness and in glory, and placed the moon and the stars in the firmament on high? Who is greater than he who hath made the mountains to stand, the seas to roll, and the winds to blow? who hath not only made the souls of men, but all the spirits of the upper and nether world--" "Peace, thou maniac!" cried the Master, interrupting the friar, in a voice that made him leap from the floor: "Comest thou here to babble treason against the master whom I serve, and the mighty spirits with whom I am in league? Do what thou canst do, and cease from speaking evil of dignities. What knowest thou of the principalities and powers that inhabit and rule over the various regions of the universe? No more than the mole that grovelleth beneath the sward.--What further canst thou do in proof of thy profound art?" "Behold with thine eyes, O thou who accountest thyself the greatest among the children of men!" said the friar, with a waggish air; "that I will but speak the word, and the mountains shall be rent asunder, and the tops of the everlasting hills stand in opposition. Knowest thou the proper name, figure, and dimensions of that peaked mountain over against the castle, to the west?" "Well may I know it," said the Master, "for I have looked out on it these fifty years, and many a hundred times have I followed the chase around it. It is named Cope-Law, and the mountain is my own." "Mountain of Cope-Law, hear my voice," cried the friar in the same waggish tone, in which there was an affectation of sublime command: "Thou hast borne the footsteps of thy great master and his black horse Beelzebub, yet hast thou neither been scorched nor rent. Yea though he hath cursed thee in the bitterness of ire, yet hath thy grey head never been shaken.--But, behold, a greater than thy master is here. Mountain of Cope-Law, hear my voice:--Be thou rent asunder and divided into three, that thy owner may look on thee and be astonied. If it please thee, mighty magician, look out on thy mountain of Cope-Law now."