Satan at once brought Napoleonder into the bright heaven.  The Lord God looked at him, and saw that he was a military man with shining buttons.

“I have heard, Napoleonder,” says the Lord God, “that you want to conquer the whole world.”

“Exactly so,” replies Napoleonder; “that’s what I want very much to do.”

“And have you thought,” says the Lord God, “that when you go forth to conquer you will crush many peoples and shed rivers of blood?”

“That’s all the same to me,” says Napoleonder; “the important thing for me is—­how can I subdue the whole world.”

“And will you not feel pity for the killed, the wounded, the burned, the ruined, and the dead?”

“Not in the least,” says Napoleonder.  “Why should I feel pity?  I don’t like pity.  So far as I can remember, I was never sorry for anybody or anything in my life, and I never shall be.”

Then the Lord God turns to the angels and says:  “Messrs. Angels, this seems to be the very fellow for our business.”  Then to Napoleonder he says:  “Satan was perfectly right.  You are worthy to be the instrument of my wrath, because a pitiless conqueror is worse than earthquake, famine, or deluge.  Go back to the earth, Napoleonder; I turn over to you the whole world, and through you the whole world shall be punished.”

Napoleonder says:  “Give me armies and luck, and I’ll do my best.”

Then the Lord God says:  “Armies you shall have, and luck you shall have; and so long as you are merciless you shall never be defeated in battle; but remember that the moment you begin to feel sorry for the shedding of blood—­of your own people or of others—­that moment your power will end.  From that moment your enemies will defeat you, and you shall finally be made a prisoner, be put into chains, and be sent back to Buan Island to watch geese.  Do you understand?”

“Exactly so,” says Napoleonder.  “I understand, and I will obey.  I shall never feel pity.”

Then the angels and the archangels began to say to God:  “Lord, why have you laid upon him such a frightful command?  If he goes forth so, without mercy, he will kill every living soul on earth—­he will leave none for seed!”

“Be silent!” replied the Lord God.  “He will not conquer long.  He is altogether too brave; because he fears neither others nor himself.  He thinks he will keep from pity, and does not know that pity, in the human heart, is stronger than all else, and that not a man living is wholly without it.”

“But,” the archangels say, “he is not a man; he is made of sand.”

The Lord God replies:  “Then you think he didn’t receive a soul when my water of life fell on his head?”

Napoleonder at once gathered together a great army speaking twelve languages, and went forth to war.  He conquered the Germans, he conquered the Turks, he subdued the Swedes and the Poles.  He reaped as he marched, and left bare the country through which he passed.  And all the time he remembers the condition of success—­pity for none.  He cuts off heads, burns villages, outrages women, and tramples children under his horses’ hoofs.  He desolates the whole Mohammedan kingdom—­and still he is not sated.  Finally he marches on a Christian country—­on Holy Russia.