A representation of the spirit of Death! Neither more nor less.

There was the shroud; there the cold, inscrutable countenance suggesting mysteries that it hid.

But the torch and the wings?
Well, the torch was that which lighted souls to the other world, and on the wings they flew thither.

Whoever fashioned that statue hoped for another life, or so I was convinced.
I explained my ideas.

Bastin thought them fanciful and preferred his notion of a flying man, since by constitution he was unable to discover anything spiritual in any religion except his own.