ional
Guard under Louis-Philippe, and died in easy circumstances in 1866. A
tradesman Paraclete, a Redeemer with epaulettes and gold braid!

"In 1886 one Dame Brochard of Vouvray affirmed to whoever would listen
that Jesus was reincarnate in her. In 1889 a pious madman named David
published at Angers a brochure entitled _The Voice of God_, in which he
assumed the modest appellation of 'only Messiah of the Creator Holy
Ghost,' and informed the world that he was a sewer contractor and wore a
beard a yard and a half long. At the present moment his throne is not
empty for want of successors. An engineer named Pierre Jean rode all
over the Mediterranean provinces on horseback announcing that he was the
Holy Ghost. In Paris, Berard, an omnibus conductor on the
Pantheon-Courcelles line, likewise asserts that he incorporates the
Paraclete, while a magazine article avers that the hope of Redemption
has dawned in the person of the poet Jhouney. Finally, in America, from
time to time, women claim to be Messiahs, and they recruit adherents
among persons worked up to fever pitch by Advent revivals."

"They are no worse than the people who deny God and Creation," said
Carhaix. "God is immanent in His creatures. He is their Life principle,
the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says Saint Paul. He
has His personal existence, being the 'I AM,' as Moses says.

"The Holy Ghost, through Christ in glory, will be immanent in all
beings. He will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them,
but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds
from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialize
himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling
into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors
of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbe
Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext
of becoming a child the better to symbolize the simple, naif love of the
Paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse."

"But," said Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I
understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will
transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'--to
drop into the theological vernacular."

"Yes, he will purify us soul and body."

"How will he purify our bodies?"

"The action of the Paraclete," the astrolog