ut cruel---- But I need not go on. The whole thing is
nothing but a figment and a dream, hatched in the diseased fancies of
half-starved monks dying by inches in caves and deserts, terrified by
the ghastly visions of a ruined body and a disordered mind--men so
stupid and so wicked that they could not discern the nature of the man
whom they professed to take for their God--a man, apparently, one of
those rare natures, in advance of their time, whom friends and enemies
alike misconceive and thwart; and who die, as He died, helpless and
defeated, with a despairing cry to a heedless or visionary God in whom
they have believed in vain."

As the Count went on, a new and terrible phase of experience was passing
through Mark's mind. As the brain consists of two parts, so the mind
seems dual also. Thought seems at different times to consist of
different phases, each of which can only see itself--of a faith that can
see no doubt--of a doubt that can conceive of no certainty; one week
exalted to the highest heaven, the next plunged into the lowest hell.
For the first time in his life this latter phase was passing through
Mark's mind. What had always looked to him as certain as the hills and
fields, seemed, on a sudden, shrunken and vanished away. His mind felt
emptied and vacant; he could not even think of God. It appeared even
marvellous to him that anything could have filled this vast fathomless
void, much less such a lovely and populous world as that which now
seemed vanished as a morning mist. He tried to rouse his energies, to
grasp at and to recover his accustomed thoughts, but he seemed
fascinated; the eyes of the Count rested on him, as he thought, with an
evil glance. He turned faint.

But the Prince came to his aid. He was looking across at the Count with
a sort of lazy dislike; as one looks at a stuffed reptile or at a foul
but caged bird.

"Thou art soon put down, little one," he said, with his kindly, lofty
air. "Tell him all this is nothing to thee! That disease and
distraction never created anything. That nothing lives without a germ of
life. Tell the Count that thou art not careful to answer him--that it
may be as he says. Tell him that even were it so--that He of whom he
speaks died broken-hearted in that despairing cry to the Father who He
thought had deserted Him--tell the Count thou art still with Him! Tell
him that if His mission was misconceived and perverted, it was because
His spirit and method was Divin