But a thought strikes me!" "What thought is that ?" "If the only ones who can be saved are the Catholics, and of them only five per cent--as many curates say--and as the Catholics form only a twelfth part of the population of the world--if we believe what statistics show--it would result that after damning millions and millions of men during the countless ages that passed before the Saviour came to the earth, after a Son of God has died for us, it is now possible to save only five in every twelve hundred.

That cannot be so! I prefer to believe and say with Job: 'Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro, and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble ?' No, such a calamity is impossible and to believe it is blasphemy!" "What do you wish?
Divine Justice, divine Purity--" "Oh, but divine Justice and divine Purity saw the future before the creation," answered the old man, as he rose shuddering.

"Man is an accidental and not a necessary part of creation, and that God cannot have created him, no indeed, only to make a few happy and condemn hundreds to eternal misery, and all in a moment, for hereditary faults! No! If that be true, strangle your baby son sleeping there! If such a belief were not a blasphemy against that God, who must be the Highest Good, then the Phenician Moloch, which was appeased with human sacrifices and innocent blood, and in whose belly were burned the babes torn from their mothers' breasts, that bloody deity, that horrible divinity, would be by the side of Him a weak girl, a friend, a mother of humanity!" Horrified, the Lunatic--or the Sage--left the house and ran along the street in spite of the rain and the darkness.

A lurid flash, followed by frightful thunder and filling the air with deadly currents, lighted the old man as he stretched his hand toward the sky and cried out: "Thou protestest! I know that Thou art not cruel, I know that I must only name Thee Good!" The flashes of lightning became more frequent and the storm increased in violence..