mpt when he recognised the deception
of the demiurge, his voluntary exile among mankind, and, finally, of his
project to stir up rebellion in Heaven. Ready to dare all against an
odious master, whom he pursued with inextinguishable hatred, he
expressed his profound happiness at finding in Ithuriel a mind capable
of counselling and helping him in his great undertaking.

"You are not a very old hand at revolutions," said Zita, smiling.

Nevertheless, she doubted neither his sincerity nor the firmness of his
declared resolve, and she congratulated him on his intellectual
audacity.

"That is what is most lacking in our people," she said, "they do not
think."

And she added almost immediately: "But on what can intelligence sharpen
its wits, in a country where the climate is soft and existence made
easy? Even here, where necessity calls for intellectual activity,
nothing is rarer than a person who thinks."

"Nevertheless," replied Maurice's guardian angel, "man has created
science. The important thing is to introduce it into Heaven. When the
angels possess some notions of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and
physiology; when the study of matter shows them worlds in an atom, and
an atom in the myriads of planets; when they see themselves lost
between these two infinities; when they weigh and measure the stars,
analyse their composition, and calculate their orbits, they will
recognise that these monsters work in obedience to forces which no
intelligence can define, or that each star has its particular divinity,
or indigenous god; and they will realise that the gods of Aldebaran,
Betelgeuse, and Sirius are greater than Ialdabaoth. When at length they
come to scrutinise with care the little world in which their lot is
cast, and, piercing the crust of the earth, note the gradual evolution
of its flora and fauna and the rude origin of man, who, under the
shelter of rocks and in cave dwellings, had no God but himself; when
they discover that, united by the bonds of universal kinship to plants,
beasts, and men, they have successively indued all forms of organic
life, from the simplest and the most primitive, until they became at
length the most beautiful of the children of light, they will perceive
that Ialdabaoth, the obscure demon of an insignificant world lost in
space, is imposing on their credulity when he pretends that they issued
from nothingness at his bidding; they will perceive that he lies in
calling himself the Infini