, physicists, geologists, and naturalists. I have learnt. I
have thought. I have lost my faith."

"What? You no longer believe in God?"

"I believe in Him, since my existence depends on His, and if He should
fail to exist, I myself should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him,
even as the Satyrs and the Maenads believed in Dionysus and for the same
reason. I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny
that He created the world; at the most He organised but an inferior part
of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and
unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite, for
it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time.
I think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be
the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the
beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His
worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He
is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is
not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like
myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."

"What's that you say?"

"Ialdabaoth."

"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"

"I have already told you. It is the demiurge whom, in your blindness,
you adore as the one and only God."

"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk rubbish like that to Abbe
Patouille."

"I am not in the least sanguine, my dear Maurice, of piercing the dense
night of your intellect. I merely tell you that I am going to engage
Ialdabaoth in conflict with some hopes of victory."

"Mark my words, you won't succeed."

"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for a moment in doubt."

"What is your name?"

"Abdiel for the angels and saints, Arcade for mankind."

"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you going to the bad. But confess
that you are jesting with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving
Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the greatest follies. But you
will never make me believe that you, who have seen God face to face,
ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty books. No, you will
never get me to believe that!"

"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face with God, yet he refused to
serve Him. As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth
that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever
enabling us to discover