Jeoffry trots at the devil’s heels down the madhouse stairs, past the mouse’s nest on the landing, past the kitchen with its pleasant smell of bread and pork fat, through the asylum’s heavy door (which stands mysteriously open), and onto roads of Darkness, beneath which the round orb of Earth hangs like a jewel. Jeoffry gazes with interest up at the blue glow of the Crystalline Firmament, at the fixed stars, and at the golden chain of Heaven, from which all the Universe is suspended. He feels hungry.

“Well,” the devil says presently. “Let’s get the formalities out of the way.” He snaps his fingers. Instantly Jeoffry is dangling above the Earth, staring down at it as one does at a patterned carpet. He can see the gleaming rooftop of the madhouse, and Bethnal Green, and the darkened streets of London, still bustling, even at this time of night.

“All of this could be yours,” Satan says. “Yea, I will give you all the kingdoms of Earth if you’d but bow down and worship me.”

Jeoffry does not like being dangled. His fur bristles as he prepares himself to fall. But then he catches the smell of the fish market in the air, and hears the distant yowl of a tomcat making love on the street. And Jeoffry understands, for a moment, what the devil is offering him. He understands, also, that this offer represents a fundamentally wrong order to the universe.

You should bow down and worship Jeoffry!

“Right,” the devil says. “I thought as much.”

He snaps his fingers again, and they are back on the path between the fixed stars, with the planets far below them.

“You have the sin of pride, cat,” Satan says. “A sin I am particularly fond of, given that it is my own. For that reason I am taking you into my confidence. You see, I have an interest in your poet.”

Mine!

“That’s debatable. There are multiple claims to Mr. Smart. The Tyrant of Heaven’s, his debtors’, his family’s … the man is like a ruined estate, overrun with scavengers. Me,” the devil shrugs, “he owes for some of his earlier debaucheries—he was an extravagant man in his youth—and for that I need to collect.”

Jeoffry’s tail twitches back and forth. Like many who have conversed with the devil, he can sense something wrong with this dark tide of speech, a lie buried beneath Satan’s reasonable arguments. But he cannot work out what it is.

“Now,” says the Adversary, “I would be willing to forgive this debt if your poet would but write me a poem. I have the perfect thing in mind: a metered piece of guile that, unleashed, would lay waste to Creation.