s, to help on with their sympathy any conciliatory
solutions, so that dogma should not fall to the ground, finding no
place in the rapid march of events that was hurrying humanity into
the future with the whirl of its new discoveries. Entire books were
written by eminent priests with the view of adjusting and bringing
into line the revelations of the holy books and the discoveries of
modern science, even at the risk of doing some violence to the former.
The ancient and venerable Church that Gabriel had seen in his own
country, immovable in its antiquated majesty, unwilling to move a
single fold of its mantle for fear of losing some of the dust of ages,
was stirring in France, endeavouring to renew itself, throwing on one
side the ancient garments of tradition, like old rags that would turn
it into ridicule, and stretching out its hands with almost despairing
strength to catch hold of the modern achievements of science; the
great enemy of yesterday, whose appearance had been ushered in with
bonfires and shameful abjurations was triumphant to-day.

What had that fatal apple of Paradise contained, that after six
thousand years of malediction that same Church had begun to venerate
it, striving to make it forget its ancient persecutions? Why was
religion, firm as a rock throughout the centuries, which had defied
persecutions, schisms and wars, beginning to dissolve before the
discoveries of a few men, and entering into that wild current which
sought for the cause and explanation of everything? If it had the
secular support of faith, why should it seek the assistance of reason
to maintain its traditions and to justify its dogmas?

Gabriel felt the same fever of curiosity which had obliged him as a
child to bend his back over the old volumes, bound in parchment, in
the library of the seminary; he wished to be acquainted with the
mysterious perfume of that hated science which had so disturbed God's
priests, and had made them indirectly deny the beliefs of nineteen
centuries. He wished to know why the sacred books were being
dislocated and tortured in order to explain by geological periods the
creation which God had accomplished in six days. What danger did they
hope to avoid by making the divinity appear before science in order to
explain its acts and fit them into the decisions of the latter?
Whence came the instinctive fear of the religious authors of roundly
affirming miracles? attempting instead to justify them by intricat