elfth part of the population of the world--if we believe
what statistics show--it would result that after damning millions
and millions of men during the countless ages that passed before
the Saviour came to the earth, after a Son of God has died for us,
it is now possible to save only five in every twelve hundred. That
cannot be so! I prefer to believe and say with Job: 'Wilt thou break
a leaf driven to and fro, and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?' No,
such a calamity is impossible and to believe it is blasphemy!"

"What do you wish? Divine Justice, divine Purity--"

"Oh, but divine Justice and divine Purity saw the future before the
creation," answered the old man, as he rose shuddering. "Man is an
accidental and not a necessary part of creation, and that God cannot
have created him, no indeed, only to make a few happy and condemn
hundreds to eternal misery, and all in a moment, for hereditary
faults! No! If that be true, strangle your baby son sleeping there! If
such a belief were not a blasphemy against that God, who must be
the Highest Good, then the Phenician Moloch, which was appeased with
human sacrifices and innocent blood, and in whose belly were burned
the babes torn from their mothers' breasts, that bloody deity, that
horrible divinity, would be by the side of Him a weak girl, a friend,
a mother of humanity!"

Horrified, the Lunatic--or the Sage--left the house and ran along the
street in spite of the rain and the darkness. A lurid flash, followed
by frightful thunder and filling the air with deadly currents, lighted
the old man as he stretched his hand toward the sky and cried out:
"Thou protestest! I know that Thou art not cruel, I know that I must
only name Thee Good!"

The flashes of lightning became more frequent and the storm increased
in violence.

CHAPTER XV

The Sacristans

The thunder resounded, roar following close upon roar, each preceded'
by a blinding flash of zigzag lightning, so that it might have been
said that God was writing his name in fire and that the eternal
arch of heaven was trembling with fear. The rain, whipped about in
a different direction each moment by the mournfully whistling wind,
fell in torrents. With a voice full of fear the bells sounded their
sad supplication, and in the brief pauses between the roars of the
unchained elements tolled forth sorrowful peals, like plaintive groans.

On the second floor of the church tower were the two boys whom we saw
t