l have no
proof left of God's existence."

Pecuchet uttered a cry, and a long one too, although he had a cold in
his head, caused by the iodine of potassium, and a continual
feverishness increased his excitement. Bouvard, being uneasy about him,
sent for the doctor.

Vaucorbeil ordered orange-syrup with the iodine, and for a later stage
cinnabar baths.

"What's the use?" replied Pecuchet. "One day or another the form will
die out. The essence does not perish."

"No doubt," said the physician, "matter is indestructible. However----"

"Ah, no!--ah, no! The indestructible thing is being. This body which is
there before me--yours, doctor--prevents me from knowing your real self,
and is, so to speak, only a garment, or rather a mask."

Vaucorbeil believed he was mad.

"Good evening. Take care of your mask."

Pecuchet did not stop. He procured an introduction to the Hegelian
philosophy, and wished to explain it to Bouvard.

"All that is rational is real. There is not even any reality save the
idea. The laws of the mind are laws of the universe; the reason of man
is identical with that of God."

Bouvard pretended to understand.

"Therefore the absolute is, at the same time, the subject and the
object, the unity whereby all differences come to be settled. Thus,
things that are contradictory are reconciled. The shadow permits the
light; heat and cold intermingled produce temperature. Organism
maintains itself only by the destruction of organism; everywhere there
is a principle that disunites, a principle that connects."

They were on the hillock, and the cure was walking past the gateway with
his breviary in his hand.

Pecuchet asked him to come in, as he desired to finish the explanation
of Hegel, and to get some notion of what the cure would say about it.

The man of the cassock sat down beside them, and Pecuchet broached the
question of Christianity.

"No religion has established this truth so well: 'Nature is but a moment
of the idea.'"

"A moment of the idea!" murmured the priest in astonishment.

"Why, yes. God in taking a visible envelope showed his consubstantial
union with it."

"With nature--oh! oh!"

"By His decease He bore testimony to the essence of death; therefore,
death was in Him, made and makes part of God."

The ecclesiastic frowned.

"No blasphemies! it was for the salvation of the human race that He
endured sufferings."

"Error! We look at death in the case of the individual, wh