opitious to the bearer of good
tidings, the gospel messenger, and he took it.

"Suppose yourself now in the presence of God," he said, in a low voice,
mysteriously; "what would you say to Him?"

Madame Graslin stopped as though struck by a thunderbolt; she shuddered;
then she said simply, in tones that brought tears to the rector's
eyes:--

"I should say, as Jesus Christ said: 'Father, why hast thou forsaken
me?'"

"Ah! Magdalen, that is the saying I expected of you," cried Monsieur
Bonnet, who could not help admiring her. "You see you are forced to
appeal to God's justice; you invoke it! Listen to me, madame. Religion
is, by anticipation, divine justice. The Church claims for herself the
right to judge the actions of the soul. Human justice is a feeble image
of divine justice; it is but a pale imitation of it applied to the needs
of society."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You are not the judge of your own case, you are dependent upon God,"
said the priest; "you have neither the right to condemn yourself nor
the right to absolve yourself. God, my child, is a great reverser of
judgments."

"Ah!" she exclaimed.

"He _sees_ the origin of things, where we see only the things
themselves."

Veronique stopped again, struck by these ideas, that were new to her.

"To you," said the brave priest, "to you whose soul is a great one, I
owe other words than those I ought to give to my humble parishioners.
You, whose mind and spirit are so cultivated, you can rise to the sense
divine of the Catholic religion, expressed by images and words to the
poor and childlike. Listen to me attentively, for what I am about to say
concerns you; no matter how extensive is the point of view at which I
place myself for a moment, the case is yours. _Law_, invented to
protect society, is based on equality. Society, which is nothing but an
assemblage of acts, is based on inequality. There is therefore lack
of harmony between act and law. Ought society to march on favored or
repressed by law? In other words, ought law to be in opposition to the
interior social movement for the maintenance of society, or should it
be based on that movement in order to guide it? All legislators have
contented themselves with analyzing acts, indicating those that seemed
to them blamable or criminal, and attaching punishments to such or
rewards to others. That is human law; it has neither the means to
prevent sin, nor the means to prevent the return to sinfulne