“Nay, but I’ll tell the gentleman who Christian was, and with pleasure,” cried a lucid, rather sallow little man that had sat quietly smiling and listening.  “My name, let me tell you, is Atheist, sir; and Christian was formerly a very near neighbour of an old friend of my family’s—­Mr. Sceptic.  They lived, sir—­at least in those days—­opposite to one another.”

“He is a great talker,” whispered Reverie in my ear.  But the company evidently found his talk to their taste.  They sat as still and attentive around him, as though before an extemporary preacher.

“Well, sir,” continued Atheist, “being, in a sense, neighbours, Christian in his youth would often confide in my friend; though, assuredly, Sceptic never sought his confidences.  And it seemeth he began to be perturbed and troubled over the discovery that it is impossible—­at least in this plain world—­to eat your cake, yet have it.  And by some ill chance he happened at this time on a mouldy old folio in my friend’s house that had been the property of his maternal grandmother—­the subtlest old tome you ever set eyes on, though somewhat too dark and extravagant and heady for a sober man of the world like me.  ’Twas called the Bible, sir—­a collection of legends and fables of all times, tongues, and countries threaded together, mighty ingeniously I grant, and in as plausible a style as any I know, if a little lax and flowery in parts.

“Well, Christian borroweth the book of my friend—­never to return it.  And being feeble and credulous, partly by reason of his simple wits, and partly by reason of the sad condition a froward youth had reduced him to, he accepts the whole book—­from Apple to Vials—­for truth.  In fact, ‘he ate the little book,’ as one of the legendary kings it celebrates had done before him.”

“Ay,” broke in Cruelty wildly, “and has ever since gotten the gripes.”

Atheist inclined his head.  “Putting it coarsely, gentlemen, such was the case,” he said.  “And away at his wit’s end he hasteneth, waning and shivering, to a great bog or quagmire—­that my friend Pliable will answer to—­and plungeth in.  ’Tis the same story repeated.  He could be temperate in nought. I knew the bog well; but I knew the stepping-stones better.  Believe me, I have traversed the narrow way this same Christian took, seeking the harps and pearls and the elixir vitae, these many years past.  The book inciteth ye to it.  It sets a man’s heart on fire—­that’s weak enough to read it—­with its pomp, and rhetoric, and far-away promises, and lofty counsels.  Oh, fine words, who is not their puppet!  I climbed ‘Difficulty.’  I snapped my fingers at the grinning Lions.  I passed cautiously through the ’Valley of the Shadow’—­wild scenery, sir!  I visited that prince of bubbles also, Giant Despair, in his draughty castle.  And—­though boasting be far from me!—­fetched Liveloose’s half-brother out of a certain charnel-house near by.