n have such a superabundance of fervid
imagination that they can, for the time being, provoke themselves into a
pseudo belief in what they know in their saner moments to be false, but
moreover a large class of men are endowed with minds so restless and so
finely strung that they can play with a sophism with marvellous
dexterity and skill, while lacking that vigorous and comprehensive grasp
of mind which the lucid exposition of a hidden truth necessitates. The
Abbe Gerard belonged a little to both these classes of beings; and
moreover, his vanity as an intellectual man provoked him to
extraordinary exertions in cases wherein he fancied he might win for
himself the glory of strengthening and verifying matters which in
themselves perhaps lacked almost the elements of existence. "Spiritual
truths," he once cynically remarked to Sainte-Beuve, whom, by the way,
he detested, "will take care of themselves; it is the nursing of
spiritual falsehood which needs all the care of the clergy." On the
Sunday in question he had surpassed himself. With biting irony he had
annihilated the disbelievers in Divine punishment, and then, with
persuasive and overwhelming eloquence, he had urged the necessity of
believing not only in hell, but in the personality of the Prince of
Evil. Women had fainted in their terror; men had been frightened into
seeking the convenient solace of the confessional, and the Archbishop
had written him a letter of the warmest thanks.

It was a triumph which a man of the nature of the Abbe Gerard
particularly enjoyed. The idea of finding himself the successful reviver
of an inanimate doctrine, while secretly conscious that he was, in
reality, a skeptic in matters of dogmatically vital importance, was to a
mind so prone to delight in paradoxes eminently agreeable. It pleased
him to see the letter of the Archbishop lying upon a volume of Strauss,
and to read the glowing and extravagant praise lavished on him in the
pages of the "Univers" after having enjoyed a sparkling draught of
Voltaire.

Such was the Abbe Gerard--the type of a class. The Duc de Frontignan,
with whom he was dining on the evening this story opens, was or rather
_is_ in many ways a no less remarkable personage in Paris society.
Possessing rank, birth, and a splendid income, he had inherited more
than a fair share of the good gifts of Providence, being endowed not
only with considerable mental power, but with the tact to use that power
to the best ad