"He is a very fascinating legendary personage;"--continued the prince, lighting another cigar and beginning to puff at it slowly--"And he is the subject of many a fine story. Picture his fall from heaven!--'Lucifer Son of the Morning'--what a title, and what a birthright! To be born of the morning implies to be a creature formed of translucent light undefiled, with all the warm rose of a million orbs of day colouring his bright essence, and all the lustre of fiery planets flaming in his eyes. Splendid and supreme, at the right hand of Deity itself he stood, this majestic Arch-angel, and before his unwearied vision rolled the grandest creative splendours of God's thoughts and dreams. All at once he perceived in the vista of embryonic things a new small world, and on it a being forming itself slowly as it were into the Angelic likeness,--a being weak yet strong, sublime yet foolish,--a strange paradox, destined to work its way through all the phases of life, till imbibing the very breath and soul of the Creator it should touch Conscious Immortality,--Eternal Joy. Then Lucifer, full of wrath, turned on the Master of the Spheres, and flung forth his reckless defiance, crying aloud--'Wilt thou make of this slight poor creature an Angel even as I? I do protest against thee and condemn! Lo, if thou makest Man in Our image I will destroy him utterly, as unfit to share with me the splendours of Thy Wisdom,--the glory of Thy love!' And the Voice Supreme in accents terrible and beautiful replied; 'Lucifer, Son of the Morning, full well dost thou know that never can an idle or wasted word be spoken before Me. For Free-will is the gift of the Immortals; therefore what thou sayest, thou must needs do! Fall, proud Spirit from thy high estate!--thou and thy companions with thee!--and return no more till Man himself redeem thee! Each human soul that yields unto thy tempting shall be a new barrier set between thee and heaven; each one that of its own choice doth repel and overcome thee, shall lift thee nearer thy lost home! When the world rejects thee, I will pardon and again receive thee,--but _not till then_.'" "I never heard exactly that version of the legend before,"--I said,--"The idea that Man should redeem the devil is quite new to me." "Is it?" and he looked at me fixedly--"Well--it is one form of the story, and by no means the most unpoetical. Poor Lucifer! His punishment is of course eternal, and the distance between himself and Heaven must be rapidly increasing every day,--for Man will never assist him to retrieve his error. Man will reject God fast enough and gladly enough--but never the devil. Judge then, how, under the peculiar circumstances of his doom, this 'Lucifer, Son of the Morning,' Satan, or whatever else he is called, must hate Humanity!" I smiled. "Well he has one remedy left to him"--I observed--"He need not tempt anybody."