The Fourth Circle Read Online Free

briefly regretted that his affection should go unreturned even at the moment of parting.
    As he drove back to the campus, that same part of himself confronted the full extent of the loneliness awaiting him in the temple in the jungle and forced him to ask himself certain questions, which for some reason he had never given any thought to. Before they became uppermost, however, an idea swam up from the rational part of his mind, driving them away at once. He would not be alone in the temple. Of course! He would take Rama with him.
     
    5. A PACT WITH HELL
     
    SO I CLIMBED up and saw....
    Oh, Sotona, spawn of Hell, may God's wrath destroy you, may you be cursed forever!
    What have you done to him? To make the Master your obedient slave, to lead him to such blasphemy, merely for your own gratification? And in the temple of God, where there is place only for His most holy Son and Marya the Blessed Virgin and the other saints, whose names your leprous mouth is not fit to utter!
    That he should paint these scenes of Hell, desecrate these hallowed walls with your diabolical excrement, defile with the filth of the underworld the Lord's consecrated house?
    This can remain hidden no longer. Even had I time and opportunity, I could not whitewash over the images of the Devil's kingdom covering the vaulted ceiling, not without being seen. The long-robed ones, damned may they be, are already prowling like beasts on the trail of blood, and soon they will discover this spectacle, inspired by all the evil spirits of Hell. And when the iguman learns that the Unclean One has come in person to dwell in his monastery thence to mock the Almighty to His face....
    I dare not even think about it, for there is no help for us. Not for him, and not for me, his innocent servant. Innocent—yes, but everyone will think me guilty.
    Almost half my life I have been his helper, now let you prove that the vrag's shadow has not fallen on you too! Who will recall that he did not let me even mix the paints for this satanic desecration, that this is the first time I laid eyes on it—better I had been struck blind than to see this....
    Not even the images of hell that so terrified me as a small child that I've feared them all my adult life come nigh to this image, that he, in the Devil's power, has painted on the ceiling of God's temple! The imagination of a true believer cannot conceive of this desolation of Hades, infinite, devoid of God's creatures, devoid of plants and beasts, devoid of people who are a joy in God's sight. Only grayness, and endless death, and no sign of the Savior anywhere.
    And amidst this unearthly horror, such as the world has never seen, not even before the Creation, there is yet a sign, the mark of Sotona, the circle of the Unclean—just where the blessed cross ought to be!
Oh, wretch that I am! What is my sin that I must suffer so? He, the Master, at least knows why he will be punished. His talent, powerful and monstrous, as I suspected from the first, was not from God. Maybe that suspicion is my only guilt. God surely cannot love those whose ability resembles His own. He allots talent, but in moderation, so that the gifted do not become proud or think they can rival Him. And where that boundary is crossed, the gift is no longer God's, but the Devil's. In his abominable unending war with the Almighty, Sotona, the fallen angel, often reaches out to snatch human souls, to tear them from God's blessed bosom, that he may gloat over their eternal torment in the dark pits of Hades.
    His hellish cunning wins over vain, weak, human souls with unnatural gifts, so that they surrender to him gladly to satisfy their presumptuous desires, their hunger for glory. So too my Master, may God deliver him from his sin, must have thus promised his soul to the Unclean in exchange for the skill of a great painter.
    For who in all Christendom can compare with him? Who else has painted so many of God's churches and monasteries with such scenes of wonder and