a child is too small; I should say, not sufficient;
which would result in four or five times more lay children than monks
being required in a given time. The sin, lessened on the one hand, would
therefore be increased on the other, in quantity, not in quality. Please
understand, gentlemen, that in reasoning thus, I am taking the point of
view which might have been taken by a criminal of the middle ages. As
for myself, a man of the late nineteenth century, I, of course, should
reason differently; I say so plainly, and therefore you need not jeer
at me nor mock me, gentlemen. As for you, general, it is still more
unbecoming on your part. In the second place, and giving my own personal
opinion, a child's flesh is not a satisfying diet; it is too insipid,
too sweet; and the criminal, in making these experiments, could have
satisfied neither his conscience nor his appetite. I am about to
conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one of the
most important questions of that day and of our own! This criminal ended
at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving himself up to
justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system of that day,
and the tortures that awaited him--the wheel, the stake, the fire!--we
cannot but ask, I repeat, what induced him to accuse himself of this
crime? Why did he not simply stop short at the number sixty, and keep
his secret until his last breath? Why could he not simply leave the
monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why not become a
monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in! There must have been
something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even than the habits
of twenty years! There must have been an idea more powerful than all
the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or torture, leprosy or
plague--an idea which entered into the heart, directed and enlarged the
springs of life, and made even that hell supportable to humanity!
Show me a force, a power like that, in this our century of vices
and railways! I might say, perhaps, in our century of steamboats and
railways, but I repeat in our century of vices and railways, because I
am drunk but truthful! Show me a single idea which unites men nowadays
with half the strength that it had in those centuries, and dare to
maintain that the 'springs of life' have not been polluted and weakened
beneath this 'star,' beneath this network in which men are entangled!
Don't talk to me about your prosper