your mind.
Like a concave mirror, it distorts objects, and you need every resource
in order to verify facts.

"Never shall you understand the universe in its full extent;
consequently you cannot form an idea as to its cause, so as to have a
just notion of God, or even say that the universe is infinite, for you
should first comprehend the Infinite!

"Form is perhaps an error of your senses, substance an illusion of your
intellect. Unless it be that the world, being a perpetual flux of
things, appearances, by a sort of contradiction, would not be a test of
truth, and illusion would be the only reality.

"But are you sure that you see? Are you sure that you live? Perhaps
nothing at all exists!"

The Devil has seized Antony, and, holding him by the extremities of his
arms, stares at him with open jaws ready to swallow him up.

"Come, adore me! and curse the phantom that you call God!"

Antony raises his eyes with a last movement of lingering hope.

The Devil quits him.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHIMERA AND THE SPHINX.

Antony finds himself stretched on his back at the edge of the cliff. The
sky is beginning to grow white.

"Is this the brightness of dawn? or is it the reflection of the moon?"
He tries to rise, then sinks back, and with chattering teeth:

"I feel fatigued ... as if all my bones were broken!

"Why?

"Ah! it is the Devil! I remember; and he even repeated to me all I had
learned from old Didymus concerning the opinions of Xenophanes, of
Heraclitus, of Melissus, and of Anaxagoras, as well as concerning the
Infinite, the creation, and the impossibility of knowing anything!

"And I imagined that I could unite myself to God!"

Laughing bitterly:

"Ah! madness! madness! Is it my fault? Prayer is intolerable to me! My
heart is drier than a rock! Formerly it overflowed with love! ...

"The sand, in the morning, used to send forth exhalations on the
horizon, like the fumes of a censer. At the setting of the sun blossoms
of fire burst forth from the cross, and, in the middle of the night, it
often seemed to me that all creatures and all things, gathered in the
same silence, were with me adoring the Lord. Oh! charm of prayer, bliss
of ecstasy, gifts of Heaven, what has become of you?

"I remember a journey I made with Ammon in search of a solitude in which
we might establish monasteries. It was the last evening, and we
quickened our steps, murmuring hymns, side by side, without uttering a
word.