ssion and reprobated my book."

The Cardinal's moist eyes again began to sparkle. "Ah! you did that, ah!
you did well, my dear son," he said. "It was only your strict duty as a
priest, but there are so many nowadays who do not even do their duty! As
a member of the Congregation I kept the promise I gave you to read your
book, particularly the incriminated pages. And if I afterwards remained
neutral, to such a point even as to miss the sitting in which judgment
was pronounced, it was only to please my poor, dear niece, who was so
fond of you, and who pleaded your cause to me."

Tears were coming into his eyes again, and he paused, feeling that he
would once more be overcome if he evoked the memory of that adored and
lamented Benedetta. And so it was with a pugnacious bitterness that he
resumed: "But what an execrable book it was, my dear son, allow me to
tell you so. You told me that you had shown respect for dogma, and I
still wonder what aberration can have come over you that you should have
been so blind to all consciousness of your offences. Respect for
dogma--good Lord! when the entire work is the negation of our holy
religion! Did you not realise that by asking for a new religion you
absolutely condemned the old one, the only true one, the only good one,
the only one that can be eternal? And that sufficed to make your book the
most deadly of poisons, one of those infamous books which in former times
were burnt by the hangman, and which one is nowadays compelled to leave
in circulation after interdicting them and thereby designating them to
evil curiosity, which explains the contagious rottenness of the century.
Ah! I well recognised there some of the ideas of our distinguished and
poetical relative, that dear Viscount Philibert de la Choue. A man of
letters, yes! a man of letters! Literature, mere literature! I beg God to
forgive him, for he most surely does not know what he is doing, or
whither he is going with his elegiac Christianity for talkative working
men and young persons of either sex, to whom scientific notions have
given vagueness of soul. And I only feel angry with his Eminence Cardinal
Bergerot, for he at any rate knows what he does, and does as he pleases.
No, say nothing, do not defend him. He personifies Revolution in the
Church, and is against God."

Although Pierre had resolved that he would not reply or argue, he had
allowed a gesture of protest to escape him on hearing this furious attack
upon