Page 143 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

tered through the lowered blinds; and through the fissure
between the last blind and the sash a shaft of wan light en-
tered like a spear and touched the embossed brasses of the
candlesticks upon the altar that gleamed like the battle-
worn mail armour of angels.
Rain was falling on the chapel, on the garden, on the col-
lege. It would rain for ever, noiselessly. The water would rise
inch by inch, covering the grass and shrubs, covering the
trees and houses, covering the monuments and the moun-
tain tops. All life would be choked off, noiselessly: birds,
men, elephants, pigs, children: noiselessly floating corpses
amid the litter of the wreckage of the world. Forty days and
forty nights the rain would fall till the waters covered the
face of the earth.
It might be. Why not?
—HELL HAS ENLARGED ITS SOUL AND OPENED
ITS MOUTH WITHOUT ANY LIMITS— words taken, my
dear little brothers in Christ Jesus, from the book of Isaias,
fifth chapter, fourteenth verse. In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The preacher took a chainless watch from a pocket with-
in his soutane and, having considered its dial for a moment
in silence, placed it silently before him on the table.
He began to speak in a quiet tone.
—Adam and Eve, my dear boys, were, as you know, our
first parents, and you will remember that they were created
by God in order that the seats in heaven left vacant by the
fall of Lucifer and his rebellious angels might be filled again.
Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and

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