What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he had hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and Lucifer, regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the Church spinning to the other end of the room, and split the marble table with a single stroke of his tail.  The six crouched and huddling Cardinals cowered revealed to one another, and at the same time enjoyed the spectacle of his Holiness darting through the stone ceiling, which yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up afterwards as if nothing had happened.  After the first shock of dismay they unanimously rushed to the door, but found it bolted on the outside.  There was no other exit, and no means of giving an alarm.  In this emergency the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a bright example to their ultramontane colleagues. “Bisogna pazienzia,” they said, as they shrugged their shoulders.  Nothing could exceed the mutual politeness of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two who had sought to poison each other.  The Frenchman was held to have gravely derogated from good manners by alluding to this circumstance, which had reached his ears while he was under the table:  and the Englishman swore so outrageously at the plight in which he found himself that the Italians then and there silently registered a vow that none of his nation should ever be Pope, a maxim which, with one exception, has been observed to this day.

Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed in all the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he thought his visitor had probably had enough.

“I should think so indeed,” replied Lucifer.  “But at the same time I feel myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of the loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is needless for me to devote any considerable amount of personal attention to ecclesiastical affairs.  I now claim the promised boon, which it will be in no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant, seeing that it is a work of mercy.  I demand that the Cardinals be released, and that their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone suffered, be buried in oblivion.”

“I hoped you would carry them all off,” said Gerbert, with an expression of disappointment.

“Thank you,” said the Devil.  “It is more to my interest to leave them where they are.”

So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth, sheepish and crestfallen.  If, after all, they did less mischief than Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire bewilderment by what had passed, and their utter inability to penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even with ostentation to good works.  They could never quite satisfy themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and when under the latter impression habitually emitted propositions which Gerbert