apacy, seemed
likely to conduce to the rise of some anti-pope, far away, whilst the
successor of St. Peter was compelled to cling stubbornly to his Apostolic
and Roman fiction. A bishop, a priest would arise--where, who could tell?
Perhaps yonder in that free America, where there are priests whom the
struggle for life has turned into convinced socialists, into ardent
democrats, who are ready to go forward with the coming century. And
whilst Rome remains unable to relinquish aught of her past, aught of her
mysteries and dogmas, that priest will relinquish all of those things
which fall from one in dust. Ah! to be that priest, to be that great
reformer, that saviour of modern society, what a vast dream, what a part,
akin to that of a Messiah summoned by the nations in distress. For a
moment Pierre was transported as by a breeze of hope and triumph. If that
great change did not come in France, in Paris, it would come elsewhere,
yonder across the ocean, or farther yet, wherever there might be a
sufficiently fruitful soil for the new seed to spring from it in
overflowing harvests. A new religion! a new religion! even as he had
cried on returning from Lourdes, a religion which in particular should
not be an appetite for death, a religion which should at last realise
here below that Kingdom of God referred to in the Gospel, and which
should equitably divide terrestrial wealth, and with the law of labour
ensure the rule of truth and justice.

In the fever of this fresh dream Pierre already saw the pages of his new
book flaring before him when his eyes fell on an object lying upon a
chair, which at first surprised him. This also was a book, that work of
Theophile Morin's which Orlando had commissioned him to hand to its
author, and he felt annoyed with himself at having left it there, for he
might have forgotten it altogether. Before putting it into his valise he
retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas
changing as by a sudden mental revolution. The work was, however, a very
modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor's degree containing
little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences
were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state
of human knowledge. And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon
Pierre's reverie with the energy of sovereign power. Not only was
Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions,
every hypo