blow out our brains with a little instrument no larger than our hands; it
seems to us that chaos would return again; we have written and revised
the laws both human and divine, and we are afraid of our catechisms; we
suffer thirty years without murmuring and imagine that we are struggling;
finally suffering becomes the stronger, we send a pinch of powder into
the sanctuary of intelligence, and a flower pierces the soil above our
grave."

As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against
Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious
condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the
bed-clothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a
little ebony crucifix.

I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to
the floor. It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that little crucifix
on her deathbed. I did not remember ever having seen it before;
doubtless, at the moment of setting out, she had suspended it about her
neck as a preserving charm against the dangers of the journey. Suddenly I
joined my hands and knelt on the floor.

"O Lord, my God," I said, in trembling tones, "Lord, my God, thou art
there!"

Let those who do not believe in Christ read this page; I no longer
believed in Him. Neither as a child, nor at school, nor as a man, have I
frequented churches; my religion, if I had any, had neither rite nor
symbol, and I believed in a God without form, without a cult, and without
revelation. Poisoned, from youth, by all the writings of the last
century, I had sucked, at an early hour, the sterile milk of impiety.
Human pride, that God of the egoist, closed my mouth against prayer,
while my affrighted soul took refuge in the hope of nothingness. I was as
if drunken or insensate when I saw that effigy of Christ on Brigitte's
bosom; while not believing in Him myself, I recoiled, knowing that she
believed in Him.

It was not vain terror that arrested my hand. Who saw me? I was alone and
it was night. Was it prejudice? What prevented me from hurling out of my
sight that little piece of black wood? I could have thrown it into the
fire, but it was my weapon I threw there. Ah! what an experience that was
and still is for my soul! What miserable wretches are men who mock at
that which can save a human being! What matters the name, the form, the
belief? Is not all that is good sacred? How dare any one touch God?

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