gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate⁠—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me. To whom do I speak? Who are you?”

The Bishop hung his head and replied, “Vermis sum⁠—I am a worm.”

“A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary.

It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be humble.

The Bishop resumed mildly:⁠—

“So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moorhens which I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ’93 was not inexorable.”

The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep away a cloud.

“Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me. I have just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them in the future.”

“I thank you,” said the Bishop.

G⁠⸺ resumed.

“Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we? What were you saying to me? That ’93 was inexorable?”

“Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop. “What think you of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?”

“What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?”

The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetishes, and they sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.

The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:⁠—

“Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing. Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, ’93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchêne senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tetê is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, ‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying.”

And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his thoughts in these tranquil words:⁠—

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized⁠—that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.”

The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the beginning:⁠—

“Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.”

The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:⁠—

“O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!”

The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:⁠—

“The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the infinite is God.”

The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld someone. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to