Manuel gave it up, and shrugged. Well, let us conquer as we may, so that God be on our side. Miramon replied: "Never fear! He shall be, in every shap… - James Branch Cabell

Nay, 'tis not fitting that we should require Within this World but Raiment, Food and Fire; Powerless Atoms of Eternity Why should we hope to know of Something higher? <p> This Knowledge could but add, not lessen. Woe; The Magian who To-day forms fire with snow Shares with the Sudra in Infinity. We come from Nothing and to Nothing go.<p> So best consent, although with forced grace, Upon this dingy Ball to run our race Untrammeled with the thoughts of higher things, Until we reach the shadowy Stopping place.

Dreaming a dream to prize, Is wishing ghosts to rise; And, if I had the spell To call the buried — well, Which one would I?

Each in his day, and within howsoever limited a circle of adherents, awakened that sustaining faith which appears vitally necessary to men's contentment, in the legend of the all powerful Redeemer who will come again, to-morrow. The theme of this book, then, is how that legend came to attach itself to Dom Manuel; how, in particular, that legend afterward affected, or did not affect, those persons who had known Dom Manuel almost intimately; and how in the end nobody believed in it any longer except Donander Veratyr. But Donander Veratyr was God.