We had the impulse to cry out, the way you nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast. Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said –

»It is as I told you – I am only a spirit.«

»Yes, one perceives it now,« said Nikolaus, »but we are not spirits. It is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible too? He looked at us, but he didn't seem to see us.«

»No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so.«

It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he sat, looking just like anybody – so natural, and simple, and charming, and chatting along again the same as ever, and – well, words cannot make you understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was back in the old ages once more, now, and making them live before us. He had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try to think how it must seem to have such experiences behind one.

But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up your drooping pride any – no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same old indifferent way – just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or not.

Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together – just a brick-pile – I was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such a strange question. Then he said –

»The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and an immortal? between a clod and a spirit?« He picked up a wood-louse that was creeping along a piece of bark: »What is the difference between Homer and this? between Caesar and this?«

I said –

»One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the interval between them are not comparable.«

»You have answered your own question,« he said. »I will expand it. Man is made of dirt – I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum of disgusting diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow, he begins as dirt and departs as a stench; I am of the aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? he has the Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by itself.«

He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at that time I had put a dim idea of what the moral sense was. I merely knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about it it wounded me and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest finery is being admired, and then overhears strangers making fun of it. For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails and set them loose in the Philistines' corn and was sitting on the fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly time. By and by he said –

»I am going on my errand, now.«

»Don't!« we all said, »don't go; stay with us. You won't come back.«

»Yes, I will, I give you my word.«

»When? To-night? To-morrow? Say when?«

»It won't be long. You will see.«

»We like you.«

»And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine to see. Usually when I go, I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let you see me do it.«

He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and thinned away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape.