In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the cashier’s ideas.  For several days he had been a devil, now he was nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition embodied in all cosmogonies.  But while he had thus shrunk to manhood, he retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite.  The power of hell had revealed the divine power.  He thirsted for heaven as he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted.  The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limit.  He believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of the other life.  A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to him from this source.  He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed for Melmoth.  The Dies irae filled him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of God.  The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.

The tears were falling from his eyes when—­“Are you a relation of the dead?” the beadle asked him.

“I am his heir,” Castanier answered.

“Give something for the expenses of the services!” cried the man.

“No,” said the cashier. (The Devil’s money should not go to the Church.)

“For the poor!”

“No.”

“For repairing the Church!”

“No.”

“The Lady Chapel!”

“No.”

“For the schools!”

“No.”

Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the irritated functionaries gave him.

Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.  “What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every country?” he asked himself.  “The feeling shared so widely throughout all time must surely be based upon something.”

“Something!  Do you call God something?” cried his conscience.  “God!  God!  God!...”

The word was echoed and reechoed by an inner voice, till it overwhelmed him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly before.  They were singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway.  But as he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians.  The melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope; but it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a ferment.  He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause, muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of timber.