, and the touching idols of Virgin Mothers
pressing their suckling to their heart. For, to be just, a little
agreeable paganism had slipped into the cult of the jealous God. These
monsters of heretics were for extirpating idolatry. We did our best, my
companions and I, to hamper their horrible work, and I, for one, had the
pleasure of flinging down some dozens from the top of the porches and
galleries on to the Cathedral Square, where their detestable brains got
knocked out. The worst of it was that the Catholic Church also reformed
herself and grew more mischievous than ever. In the pleasant land of
France, the seminarists and the monks were inflamed with unheard-of fury
against the ingenious demons and the men of learning. My prior was one
of the most violent opponents of sound knowledge. For some time past my
studious lucubrations had caused him anxiety, and perhaps he had caught
sight of my cloven foot. The scoundrel searched my cell and found paper,
ink, some Greek books newly printed, and some Pan-pipes hanging on the
wall. By these signs he knew me for an evil spirit and had me thrown
into a dungeon where I should have eaten the bread of suffering and
drunk the waters of bitterness, had I not promptly made my escape by the
window and sought refuge in the wooded groves among the Nymphs and the
Fauns.

"Far and wide the lighted pyres cast the odour of charred flesh.
Everywhere there were tortures, executions, broken bones, and tongues
cut out. Never before had the spirit of Iahveh breathed forth such
atrocious fury. However, it was not altogether in vain that men had
raised the lid of the ancient sarcophagus and gazed upon the Roman
Virgin.

"During this time of great terror when Papists and Reformers rivalled
one another in violence and cruelty, amidst all these scenes of torture,
the mind of man was regaining strength and courage. It dared to look up
to the heavens, and there it saw, not the old Jew drunk with vengeance,
but Venus Urania, tranquil and resplendent. Then a new order of things
was born, then the great centuries came into being. Without publicly
denying the god of their ancestors, men of intellect submitted to his
mortal enemies, Science and Reason, and Abbe Gassendi relegated him
gently to the far-distant abyss of first causes. The kindly demons who
teach and console unhappy mortals, inspired the great minds of those
days with discourses of all kinds, with comedies and tales told in the
most polis