ere constituted as the crowd are taught to believe, there could
be nothing on earth but wisdom and goodness; but the majority are fools
or wicked, and the good are like tall trees, which the lightning blasts
rather than the creeping weed. Titianus falls before the dancer
Theocritus, the noble Papinian before the murderer Caracalla, our
splendid Alexander before such a wretch as Zminis; and divine reason lets
it all happen, and allows human reason to proclaim the law. Happiness is
for fools and knaves; for those who cherish and uphold reason--ay,
reason, which is a part of the divinity--persecution, misery, and
despair."

"Have done!" Melissa exclaimed. "Have the judgments of the immortals not
fallen hardly enough on us? Would you provoke them to discharge their
fury in some more dreadful manner?"

At this the skeptic struck his breast with defiant pride, exclaiming: "I
do not fear them, and dare to proclaim openly the conclusions of my
thoughts. There are no gods! There is no rational guidance of the
universe. It has arisen self-evolved, by chance; and if a god created it,
he laid down eternal laws and has left them to govern its course without
mercy or grace, and without troubling himself about the puling of men who
creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of a pumpkin.
And well for us that it should be so! Better a thousand times is it to be
the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious master who
takes a malignant and envious pleasure in destroying the best!"

"And this, you say, is the final outcome of your thoughts?" asked
Melissa, shaking her head sadly. "Do you not perceive that such an
outbreak of mad despair is simply unworthy of your own wisdom, of which
the end and aim should be a passionless, calm, and immovable moderation?"

"And do they show such moderation," Philip gasped out, "who pour the
poison of misfortune in floods on one tortured heart?"

"Then you can accuse those whose existence you disbelieve in?" retorted
Melissa with angry zeal. "Is this your much-belauded logic? What becomes
of your dogmas, in the face of the first misfortune--dogmas which enjoin
a reserve of decisive judgment, that you may preserve your equanimity,
and not overburden your soul, in addition to the misfortune itself, with
the conviction that something monstrous has befallen you? I remember how
much that pleased me the first time I heard it. For your own sake--for
the sake of us all--cease thi