uman soul proclaims sincerely its faith in the
divinity of a rabbit, in God's name don't disturb it. It is _something_
whereto to refer his aspirations, his resolves; it is a court of
arbitration, at the lowest, for his spiritual disputes; and the rabbit
will be as effective an oracle as any other. For are not all religions
but the strivings of the spirit towards crystallisation at some point
outside the environment of passions and appetites which is the flesh, so
that it can work untrammelled: and are not all gods but the accidental
forms, conditioned by circumstance, which this crystallisation takes?
All gods in their anthropo-, helio-, thero-, or what-not-morphic forms
are false; but, on the other hand, all gods in their spiritual essence
are true. So I do not deprecate my prospective unique position in Lola
Brandt's hagiology. It was better for her soul that I should occupy it.
Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty
human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to
shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.

This was but a fragment of one among countless talks. Some were lighter
in tone, others darker, the mood of man being much like a child's
balloon which rises or falls as the strata of air are more rarefied or
more dense. Perhaps during the time of strain, the atmosphere was more
often rarefied, and our conversation had the day's depressing incidents
for its topics. We rarely spoke of the dead man. He was scarcely a
subject for panegyric, and it was useless to dwell on the memory of
his degradation. I think we only once talked of him deeply and at
any length, and that was on the day of the funeral. His brother, a
manufacturer at Clermont-Ferrand, and a widowed aunt, apparently his
only two surviving relatives, arrived in Algiers just in time to attend
the ceremony. They had seen the report of the murder in the newspapers
and had started forthwith. The brother, during an interview with Lola,
said bitter things to her, reproaching her with the man's downfall, and
cast on her the responsibility of his death.

"He spoke," she said, "as if I had suggested the murder and practically
put the knife into the poor crazy little fellow's hand."

The Vauvenardes must have been an amiable family.

"Before I came," she said a little while later, "I still had
some tenderness for him--a woman has for the only man that has
been--really--in her life. I wish I could feel it