lled with
milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld
that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a
mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of
her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture
of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the
French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be
absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its
most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I
abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying."

And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his
thoughts in these tranquil words:--

"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are
over, this fact is recognized,--that the human race has been treated
harshly, but that it has progressed."

The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the
inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this
intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu's resistance,
came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the
beginning:--

"Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.
He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race."

The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized
with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a
tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down
his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to
himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:--

"O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!"

The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:--

"The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person
would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it
would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is
God."

The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with
the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken,
his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he
had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to
him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in death.
The supreme moment w