insane revellers there appears an awful guest, the Plague. The Apostle Peter holds aloft the Cross, and preaches to the terrified Roman world the gospel of Christianity and asceticism.
What fate awaits the new ideal is shown in the next vision, where Adam, as Tancred the Crusader, sees how a perverted religion exalts celibacy and stigmatises pure love as a crime; he sees how in the Byzantine Christian world Christianity has degenerated into a religion of petty dogmas, ridiculous contraversies and brutal intolerance. Men have lost the spirit, and heed but the letter. What has become of the sacred religion of love and self sacrifice ? Adam (still in the vision) yearns for something altogether different from this, which has filled him with nothing but bitter disappointment. "I am exhausted and long for rest."
In the following scene Adam is the astronomer Kepler, absorbed in his studies, and keeping aloof from the world. But science alone cannot yield him satisfaction: in his quiet laboratory he yearns for great reforms, and heroic deeds, which should fashion the world anew.
And the age o f colossal events arrives, the age which sees the ancient world totter to its foundations and sink with a great crash into ruin. The day of the Freneh Revolution has dawned, and Adam reappears as Danton. But the prediction concerning the Freneh Revolution, that, like Saturn, it would destroy its own children, is fulfilled. The Revolution turns against its heroes and Danton dies on the scaffold.
Then we come to the present age. Adam, who had wished for a State founded on liberty and order, finds himself in such a State : he has become a citizen of London. Yet disappointment awaits him even here. The world
