Earth! But for what purpose could the Destroying Spirit require earth?
To create!
There was a little hollow on the south side of the tower which was sheltered from the wind on every side. This hollow the Master filled with the earth, and planted the little plot all over with flowers. In this way he soon had a perfect flower-garden laid out.
There was, then, one human being in the tower who took pleasure in flowers.
But did the terrible doctrines professed by the Master permit him to act thus kindly towards any living creature?
Alas! Nothing in creation is flawless—not even the Satanic confession of faith. Even Satan is sometimes tricked by his disciples, and unbelief itself has its hypocrisy.
To his own thinking, this man had succeeded in banishing every human feeling from his heart—but this one still remained. He had, he thought, been able to renounce every virtue in favour of its opposite vice—but this one he could not renounce. He could not fight down the kindliness that filled his heart for the poor girl, Mashinka, who had saved his child, who had accompanied him into exile, and who had become a loving mother to his boy and a devoted companion to him. So he felt grateful to her.
But that was surely a heresy against the religion he professed and preached—a positive breach of the all-denying dogma! For Gratitude is itself a virtue and closely related to Love. Gratitude being merely a tyranny of the soul over the body, how could the body, which had now become master, admit it? And if the body be indeed the ruling lord, the right of thought also belongs to it. Its philosophy must, then, determine the course of both action and feeling. Was it not plain that this one contradiction in the Master's principles might—nay, must, overturn the whole edifice of Babel?
Nevertheless, the Master found it impossible to shut his heart against this one feeling. With the most painstaking art he had laid out this garden—bought at a higher price even than the gardens of Semiramis; and that, too, for a poor peasant girl who alone in that Babel of hate had retained in her heart the priceless feeling of Love.