ot just seen how the pure has neither life nor
consciousness? And you must yourself, I trow, have learned amply from
experience that life and all pertaining thereto is invariably compound,
blended, diversified, liable to increase and decrease, unstable,
soluble, corruptible--never pure."

"Doctor," replied Giovanni, "your reasons are nothing worth, forasmuch
as God, who is all pure, exists."

But the Subtle Doctor retorted:

"If you would read your books more carefully, my son, you would see it
is said of Him you have just named, _not_, 'He exists,' but, 'He is.'
Now to exist and to be are not one and the same thing, but two opposite
things. You are alive, and do you not say yourself, 'I am nothing; I am
as if I were not'? And you do not say, 'I am he who is.' Because to
live, is each moment to cease to be. Again you say, 'I am full of
impurities,' forasmuch you are not a single thing, but a blending of
things that stir and strive."

"Now do you speak wisely," answered the holy man, "and I see by your
discourse that you are very deep read, Subtle Sir, in the sciences,
divine as well as human. For true indeed it is God is He who is."

"By the body of Bacchus," exclaimed the other, "He is, and that
perfectly and universally. Wherefore are we dispensed from seeking Him
in any single place, being assured He is to be discovered neither more
nor less in any one spot than in any other, and that you cannot find so
much as a pair of old spatterdashes without their due share of Him."

"Admirably put, and most true," returned Giovanni. "But it is right to
add that He is more particularly in the sacred elements, by the way of
transubstantiation."

"More than that!" added the learned Doctor; "He is actually edible in
them. Note moreover, my son, that He is round in an apple, long-shaped
in an aubergine, sharp in a knife and musical in a flute. He has all the
qualities of substances, and likewise all the properties of figures. He
is acute and He is obtuse, because He is at one and the same time all
possible triangles; his radii are at once equal and unequal, because He
is both the circle and the ellipse--and He is the hyperbola besides,
which is an indescribable figure."

While the holy Giovanni was still pondering these sublime verities, he
heard the Subtle Doctor suddenly burst out a-laughing. Then he asked
him:

"Why do you laugh?"

"I am laughing," replied the Doctor, "to think how they have discovered
in me certain