My father had educated me with broadly materialistic views; he himself was a follower of Voltaire, and with his finite rod he took the measure of Divinity, greatly to his own satisfaction.

He was a good man, too, and he died with exemplary calmness in the absolute certainty of there being nothing in his composition but dust, to which he was as bound to return.

He had not a shred of belief in anything but what he called the Universal Law of Necessity; perhaps this was why all his pictures lacked inspiration.

I accepted his theories without thinking much about them, and I had managed to live respectably without any religious belief.

But NOW--now with the horrible phantom of madness rising before me--my firm nerves quailed.