“Pshaw!” exclaimed Lucifer, “shame! cowardly hosts that ye are! Never more will I place my trust in you. This work I myself will perform, this enterprise none shall partake with me. {87} In mine own imperial majesty will I descend upon the earth, and alone will I devour all therein contained; henceforth no man shall there be found to worship the Most High.” Thereon he gave one terrific flying leap to start—a blaze of living fire, but the hand overhead whirls the terrible dart so that he trembles notwithstanding his rage, and ere he had gone far, an invisible hand drags the brute back by the chain for all his struggles; his rage becomes sevenfold more vehement, his eyes more fierce than dragons, thick black clouds of smoke issue from his nostrils, livid flames from his mouth and bowels, while he gnaws his chain in his grief, and mutters fearful blasphemy and awful oaths. At last, finding how futile was his attempt to sunder his bonds and how unavailing to contend against the Almighty, he returned to his throne and resumed his speech, in words somewhat more calm, but twice as malignant: “Though none but the Omnipotent Thunderer could overcome my power and my guile, to Him I am unwillingly constrained to submit; but I can pour forth the vials of my wrath here below, nearer at hand, and let loose my ire upon those who are already under my banner, and within the length of my chain. Arise, ye too, ministers of destruction, lords of the unquenchable fires, and as my anger and my venom overflow, and my malice rush forth, do ye assiduously scatter all broadcast among the damned, and chiefly among the Christians; urge on the engines of torture to their uttermost; devise and invent; increase the heat of the fire and the ebullition, until the hissing flood of the cauldrons overwhelms them; and when their unutterable woes are extremest, then sneer at them and mockingly reproach them, and when ye have exhausted all your store of scorn and gall, hie to me and ye shall be replenished.”