ogma everything goes to pieces. The proof that two infinities
can coexist is that this idea passes beyond reason and enters the
category of those things referred to in Ecclesiasticus: 'Inquire not
into things higher than thou, for many things have shown themselves to
be above the sense of men.'

"Manicheism, you see, must have had some good in it, because it was
bathed in blood. At the end of the twelfth century thousands of
Albigenses were roasted for practising this doctrine. Of course, I
can't say that the Manicheans didn't abuse their cult, mostly made up of
devil worship, because we know very well they did.

"On this point I am not with them," he went on slowly, after a silence.
He was waiting till Mme. Carhaix, who had got up to remove the plates,
should go out of the room to fetch the beef.

"While we are alone," he said, seeing her disappear through the stairway
door, "I can tell you what they did. An excellent man named Psellus has
revealed to us, in a book entitled _De operatione Daemonum_, the fact
that they tasted of the two excrements at the beginning of their
ceremonial, and that they mixed human semen with the host."

"Horrible!" exclaimed Carhaix.

"Oh, as they took both kinds of communion, they did better than that,"
returned Des Hermies. "They cut children's throats and mixed the blood
with ashes, and this paste, dissolved in liquid, constituted the
Eucharistic wine."

"You bring us right back to Satanism," said Durtal.

"Why, yes, as you see, I haven't strayed off your subject."

"I am sure Monsieur Des Hermies has been saying something awful,"
murmured Mme. Carhaix as she came in, bearing a platter on which was a
piece of beef smothered in vegetables.

"Oh, Madame," protested Des Hermies.

They burst out laughing and Carhaix cut up the meat, while his wife
poured the cider and Durtal uncorked the bottle of anchovies.

"I am afraid it's cooked too much," said the woman, who was a great deal
more interested in the beef than in other-world adventures, and she
added the famous maxim of housekeepers, "When the broth is good the beef
won't cut."

The men protested that it wasn't stringy a bit, it was cooked just
right.

"Have an anchovy and a little butter with your meat, Monsieur Durtal."

"Wife, let's have some of the red cabbage that you preserved," said
Carhaix, whose pale face was lighted up while his great canine eyes were
becoming suspiciously moist. Visibly he was jubilant. He was