His vast limbs floated in the liquid lustre, and his outspread wings, each plume the glory of a sun, bore him noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled his lustre from the eyes of mortals, and while above all was bathed in the serenity of his splendour, tempest and storm broke below over the children of the earth: "He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under his feet." And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more still, and the awfulness was humbled into awe.

Right above their thrones paused the course of the archangel; and his wings stretched from east to west, overshadowing with the shadow of light the immensity of space.

Then forth, in the shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice: and, fulfilling the heraldry of God, to each star he appointed the duty and the charge; and each star bowed his head yet lower as he heard the fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at the Majesty of the Word.

But at last, when each of the brighter stars had, in succession, received the mandate, and the viceroyalty over the nations of the earth, the purple and diadems of kings, the archangel addressed the lesser star as he sat apart from his fellows.
"Behold," said the archangel, "the rude tribes of the North, the fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of the forests that darken the mountain tops with verdure! these be thy charge, and their destinies thy care.

Nor deem thou, O Star of the sullen beams, that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren; for the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch; nor doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than on the herd.
The passions and the heart are the dominion of the stars,--a mighty realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide that garbs the shepherd than under the jewelled robes of the eastern kings." Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and answered the archangel.
"Lo!" he said, "ages have passed, and each year thou hast appointed me to the same ignoble charge.