r and her flowers.

The Abbe made haste to end the interview.

"All this is error, falsehood, and illusion, my child," said he. "You
are a Christian: think as a Christian,--a Christian does not allow
himself to be seduced by empty shadows. Faith protects him against the
seduction of the marvellous, he leaves credulity to freethinkers. There
are credulous people for you--freethinkers! There is no humbug they will
not swallow. But the Christian carries a weapon which dissipates
diabolical illusions,--the sign of the Cross. Reassure yourself,
Maurice,--you have not lost your guardian angel. He still watches over
you. It lies with you not to make this task too difficult nor too
painful for him. Good-bye, Maurice. The weather is going to change, for
I feel a burning in my big toe."

And Abbe Patouille went off with his breviary under his arm, hobbling
along with a dignity that seemed to foretell a mitre.

That very day, Arcade and Zita were leaning over the parapet of La
Butte, gazing down on the mist and smoke that lay floating over the vast
city.

"Is it possible," said Arcade, "for the mind to conceive all the pain
and suffering that lie pent within a great city? It is my belief that if
a man succeeded in realising it, the weight of it would crush him to the
earth."

"And yet," answered Zita, "every living being in that place of torment
is enamoured of life. It is a great enigma!

"Unhappy, ill-fated, while they live, the idea of ceasing to be is,
nevertheless, a horror to them. They look not for solace in
annihilation, it does not even bring them the promise of rest. In their
madness they even look upon nothingness with terror: they have peopled
it with phantoms. Look you at these pediments, these towers and domes
and spires that pierce the mist and rear on high their glittering
crosses. Men bow in adoration before the demiurge who has given them a
life that is worse than death, and a death that is worse than life."

Zita was for a long time lost in thought. At length she broke silence,
saying:

"There is something, Arcade, that I must confess to you. It was no
desire for a purer justice or wiser laws that hurried Ithuriel
earthward. Ambition, a taste for intrigue, the love of wealth and
honour, all these things made Heaven, with its calm, unbearable to me,
and I longed to mingle with the restless race of men. I came, and by an
art unknown to nearly all the angels, I learned how to fashion myself a
body which