good counsel from a publican."

"Father, you are too obliging."

"_Citoyen_ Brotteaux," remarked Gamelin, "pray admire the virtues of the
people, more hungry for justice than for bread; consider how everyone
here is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These men and
women, victims of such poverty and privation, are of so stern a probity
they cannot tolerate a dishonest act."

"It must indeed be owned," replied Brotteaux, "that in their hearty
desire to hang the pilferer, these folks were like to do a mischief to
this good cleric, to his champion and to his champion's champion. Their
avarice itself and their selfish eagerness to safeguard their own
welfare were motives enough; the thief in attacking one of them
threatened all; self-preservation urged them to punish him.... At the
same time, it is like enough the most part of these workmen and
goodwives are honest and keep their hands off other folk's goods. From
the cradle these sentiments have been instilled in them by their father
and mother, who have whipped them well and soundly and inculcated the
virtues through their backside."

Gamelin did not conceal the fact from his old neighbour that he deemed
such language unworthy of a philosopher.

"Virtue," said he, "is natural to mankind; God has planted the seed of
it in the heart of mortals."

Old Brotteaux was a sceptic and found in his atheism an abundant source
of self-satisfaction.

"I see this much, _citoyen_ Gamelin, that, while a Revolutionary for
what is of this world, you are, where Heaven is concerned, of a
conservative, or even a reactionary temper. Robespierre and Marat are
the same to you. For me, I find it strange that Frenchmen, who will not
put up with a mortal king any longer, insist on retaining an immortal
tyrant, far more despotic and ferocious. For what is the Bastille, or
even the _Chambre Ardente_[1] beside Hellfire? Humanity models its gods
on its tyrants, and you, who reject the original, preserve the copy!"

"Oh! _citoyen!_" protested Gamelin, "are you not ashamed to hold such
language? how can you confound the dark divinities born of ignorance and
fear with the Author of Nature? Belief in a benevolent God is necessary
for morality. The Supreme Being is the source of all the virtues and a
man cannot be a Republican if he does not believe in God. Robespierre
knew this, who, as we all remember, had the bust of the philosopher
Helvetius removed from the Hall of the Jacobins, bec