Now the tale tells how Dom Manuel sat at the feet of the image and played upon a flageolet. There was wizardry in the music, Dom Manuel said afterward, for he declared that it evoked in him a vision and a restless dreaming that followed after Misery.
 
So this dreaming showed that when Misery was dispossessed of the earth he entered (because Misery is unchristian) into the paradise of the pagans, where Niafer, dead now for something over a year, went restlessly in bliss: and Misery came shortly afterward to Niafer, and talked with her in a thin little voice. She listened willingly to this talk of Manuel and of the adventures which Niafer had shared with Manuel: and now that she remembered Manuel, and his clear young face and bright unequal eyes and his strong arms, she could no longer be even moderately content in the paradise of the pagans.
 
Thereafter Misery went about the heathens' paradise in the appearance of a light formless cloud. And the fields of this paradise seemed less green, the air became less pure and balmy, and the sky less radiant, and the waters of the paradisal river Eridanus grew muddy. The poets became tired of hearing one another recite, the heroes lost delight in their wrestling and chariot racing and in their exercises with the spear and the bow. "How can anybody expect us to waste eternity with recreations which are only fitted to waste time?" they demanded.
 
And the lovely ladies began to find the handsome lovers with whom they wandered hand in hand through never-fading groves of myrtle, and with whom they were forever reunited, rather tedious companions.
 
"I love you," said the lovers.
 
"You have been telling me that for twelve centuries," replied the ladies, yawning, "and too much of anything is enough."
 
"Upon my body, I think so too," declared the lovers. "I said it only out of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I am as tired of this lackadaisical idiocy as you are."
 
So everything was at sixes and sevens in this paradise: and when the mischief-maker was detected, the blessed held a meeting, for it was now the day of All Souls, on which the dead have privilege.
 
"We must preserve appearances," said these dead pagans, "and can have only happy-looking persons hereabouts, for otherwise our paradise will get a poor name, and the religion of our fathers will fall into disrepute."
 
Then they thrust Misery, and Niafer also, out of the pagan paradise, because Misery clung to Niafer in the appearance of a light formless cloud, and there was no separating the two.
 
These two turned earthward together, and came to the river of sweat called Rigjon. Niafer said to the fiery angel Sandalfon that guards the bridge there, "The Misery of earth is with me."
 
Sandalfon saw that this was so, and answered, "My fires cannot consume the Misery of earth."
 
They came to Hadarniel, the noisy angel whose, whispering is the thunder. Niafer said, "The Misery of earth is with me."
 
Hadarniel replied, "Before the Misery of earth I am silent."
 
They came to Kemuel and his ............