sonable progress, we admit all new social forms which will promote
peace and fraternity.... Only we can but condemn that socialism which
begins by driving away God as a means of ensuring the happiness of
mankind. Therein lies simple savagery, an abominable relapse into the
primitive state in which there can only be catastrophe, conflagration,
and massacre. And that again is a point on which you have not laid
sufficient stress, for you have not shown in your book that there can be
no progress outside the pale of the Church, that she is really the only
initiatory and guiding power to whom one may surrender oneself without
fear. Indeed, and in this again you have sinned, it seemed to me as if
you set God on one side, as if for you religion lay solely in a certain
bent of the soul, a florescence of love and charity, which sufficed one
to work one's salvation. But that is execrable heresy. God is ever
present, master of souls and bodies; and religion remains the bond, the
law, the very governing power of mankind, apart from which there can only
be barbarism in this world and damnation in the next. And, once again,
forms are of no importance; it is sufficient that dogma should remain.
Thus our adhesion to the French Republic proves that we in no wise mean
to link the fate of religion to that of any form of government, however
august and ancient the latter may be. Dynasties may have done their time,
but God is eternal. Kings may perish, but God lives! And, moreover, there
is nothing anti-Christian in the republican form of government; indeed,
on the contrary, it would seem like an awakening of that Christian
commonwealth to which you have referred in some really charming pages.
The worst is that liberty at once becomes license, and that our desire
for conciliation is often very badly requited.... But ah! what a
wicked book you have written, my son,--with the best intentions, I am
willing to believe,--and how your silence shows that you are beginning to
recognise the disastrous consequences of your error."

Pierre still remained silent, overcome, feeling as if his arguments would
fall against some deaf, blind, and impenetrable rock, which it was
useless to assail since nothing could enter it. And only one thing now
preoccupied him; he wondered how it was that a man of such intelligence
and such ambition had not formed a more distinct and exact idea of the
modern world. He could divine that the Pope possessed much information
and