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When Christmas Day dawned the Daemon of Malice was guarding the prisoner, and his tongue was sharper than that of any of the others. "The children are waking up, Santa!" he cried. "They are waking up to find their stockings empty! Ho, ho! How they will quarrel, and wail, and stamp their feet in anger! Our caves will be full today, old Santa! Our caves are sure to be full!"
"It is only natural. There are no images of the gods in this Christian hovel. Away, hateful serpent! We are honest folks and will not agree to any vile baseness. Here is my amulet, Karnis; if the daemon comes again you must turn it round you know how." Early next morning the singers set out for the house of Porphyrius.
There had been the fear of worse than death in her eyes when that step had sounded outside her chamber door. Hereupon, as I walked, I began to recall much that I had read in the old romances of the gratitude of rescued ladies. "Truly," said I to myself, "in olden days a lady well knew how to reward her rescuer!" "Woman is woman the same to-day as then try her, try her!" chuckled the Daemon.
If I returned, it was to be sacrificed or to see those whom I most loved die under the grasp of a daemon whom I had myself created. I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep sleep.
Yes, I have seen the spaces from which the living gods have departed enveloped in the night of eternal doubt. But I walked without fear, for my 'Daemon' lighted the way, the divine beginning of all life. Let us investigate the question. Are not offerings of incense burnt on your altars in the name of Him who gives life? You are stealing what belongs to another!
Then, suddenly, there was a loud commotion; some elastic object flew against the wall with a loud flap, and Karnis, starting up, called out: "Get out monster!" "What is it?" cried Herse who had also been startled, and the old man replied angrily: "Some daemon, some dog of a daemon is attacking me and giving me no peace.
Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction.
Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.
The great gods are of two kinds, visible, as the sun and stars, and invisible, as Jupiter and the rest; both these are inaccessible to human communion. Then come the daemons in their order, and with these man holds intercourse. Plutarch had adopted a tentative and incomplete form of this doctrine, e.g. he denied the visibility of Socrate's daemon, and spoke of the death of Pan.
Their grief is likely to make the children selfish and envious and hateful, and if they come to the Caves of the Daemons today I shall get a chance to lead some of them to my Cave of Repentance." "Do you never repent, yourself?" asked Santa Claus, curiously. "Oh, yes, indeed," answered the Daemon. "I am even now repenting that I assisted in your capture.
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