and estranged from
all religion."

"A good book thou hast there," said the bookseller. "By Musaeus, the
Jena Professor. The _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus ad Veritatis
Lancem Examinatus_--weighed in Truth's balance, indeed. A title that
draws. They say 'tis the best of all the refutations of the pernicious
and poisonous Tractate."

"Of which I see sundry copies here masked in false titles."

"'Sh! Forbidden fruit is always in demand. But so long as I supply the
antidote too--"

"Needs fruit an antidote?"

"Poisoned apples of Knowledge offered by the serpent."

"A serpent indeed," said Spinoza, reading the Antidote aloud. "'He has
left no mental faculty, no cunning, no art untried in order to
conceal his fabrication beneath a brilliant veil, so that we may with
good reason doubt whether among the great number of those whom the
devil himself has hired for the destruction of all human and divine
right, there is one to be found who has been more zealous in the work
of corruption than this traitor who was born to the great injury of
the church and to the harm of the state.' How he bruises the serpent's
head, this theology professor!" he cried; "how he lays him dead on his
balance of Truth!" To himself he thought: "How the most ignorant are
usually the most impudent and the most ready to rush into print!" He
had a faint prevision of how his name--should it really leak out,
despite all his precautions--would come to stand for atheism and
immorality, a catchword of ill-omen for a century or two; but he
smiled on, relying upon the inherent reasonableness and rightness of
the universe.

"Wilt take the book?" said the bookseller.

"Nay, 'tis not by such tirades that Truth is advanced. But hast thou
the Refutation by Lambert Velthuysen?"

The bookseller shook his head.

"That is worth a hundred of this. Prithee get that and commend it to
thy clients, for Velthuysen wields a formidable dialectic by which
men's minds may be veritably stimulated."

On his homeward way dark looks still met him, but he faced them with
cheerful, candid gaze. At the end of the narrow Spuistraat the affairs
of the broad market-place engrossed popular attention, and the
philosopher threaded his way unregarded among the stalls and the
canvas-covered Zeeland waggons, and it was not till he reached the
Paviljoensgracht--where he now sits securely in stone, pencilling a
thought as enduring--that he encountered fresh difficulty. There, at
his o