Theophile received did not avail
to modify that angel's notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at
great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita's
pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.

"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed young Maurice's guardian
angel. "I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is
human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the
mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then,
Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or
plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being
superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the
professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that
they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and
reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the
demiurge, if he had any brains!"

It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.

"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if
you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their
depths thereby."

Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame
burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the
shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine
flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:

"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less
than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania
apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite
spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros--the first of the gods,--plants,
animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which
hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations
were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and
songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the
silent skies.

"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this
one--whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads--has lasted
or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the
Infinite."

As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth
melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits,
the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion's bel