the gin killed, or covered? Is the habit of good living mere habit
and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is
it the real life?

"Who knows! Here am I, born with a question in my mouth, with the
ever-present 'non possumus' in me. Here am I, to whom life was one
poor futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally
developed; to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only
reality; to whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction,
an intimation, into my soul--not one. To me God always seemed a being of
dreams, the creation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing
cry of the victims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a
sling into this field where men believe in God as a present and tangible
being; who reply to all life's agonies and joys and exultations with the
words 'C'est le bon Dieu.' And what shall I become? Will habit do its
work, and shall I cease to be me? Shall I, in the permanency of habit,
become like unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole
cause; whose only wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of
forgiveness and safety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind
belief or an inherited predisposition--which? This stingy, hard, unhappy
man--how should he know what I am denied! Or does he know? Is it all
illusion? If there is a God who receives such devotion, to the exclusion
of natural demand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor
'let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works,
and glorify his Father which is in heaven?' That is it. Therefore,
wherefore, tailor-man? Therefore, wherefore, God? Show me a sign from
Heaven, tailor-man!"

Seated on his bench in the shop, with his eyes ever and anon raised
towards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words.
Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailor
came in to supper. Then he took up the pieces of paper, and, going to
the fire, which was still lighted of an evening, thrust them inside.

Louis Trudel saw the paper burning, and, glancing down, he noticed that
one piece--the last--had slipped to the floor and was lying under the
table. He saw the pencil still in Charley's hand. Forthwith his natural
suspicion leaped up, and the cunning of the monomaniac was upon him.
With all his belief in le bon Dieu and the Church, Louis Trudel trusted
no one. One eye was ever open to distr