True believers were wending their way to church, while the heretic, who had dared to deride their creed and denounce their hypocrisy, was regaling himself on dry bread in one of their dungeons.

The bells rang out against each other with a wild glee as I paced my narrow floor.

They seemed mad with intoxication of victory; they mocked me with a bacchanalian frenzy of triumph.

Yet I smiled grimly, for their clamor was no more than the ancient fool's shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Great Christ has had his day since, but he in turn is dead; dead in man's intellect, dead in man's heart, dead in man's life; a mere phantom, flitting about the aisles of churches, where priestly mummers go through the rites of a phantom creed.
I took my prison Bible and read the story of Christ's birth in Matthew and Luke, Mark and John having never heard of it or forgotten it.

What an incongruous jumble of absurdities! A poor fairy tale of the world's childhood, utterly insignificant beside the stupendous revelations of science.