" thought Lucien. "Have you
read Voltaire?" he asked.

"I have done better," said the other; "I put his doctrine in
practice."

"You do not believe in God?"

"Come! it is I who am the atheist, is it?" the Abbe said, smiling.
"Let us come to practical matters, my child," he added, putting an arm
round Lucien's waist. "I am forty-six years old, I am the natural son
of a great lord; consequently, I have no family, and I have a heart.
But, learn this, carve it on that still so soft brain of yours--man
dreads to be alone. And of all kinds of isolation, inward isolation is
the most appalling. The early anchorite lived with God; he dwelt in
the spirit world, the most populous world of all. The miser lives in a
world of imagination and fruition; his whole life and all that he is,
even his sex, lies in his brain. A man's first thought, be he leper or
convict, hopelessly sick or degraded, is to find another with a like
fate to share it with him. He will exert the utmost that is in him,
every power, all his vital energy, to satisfy that craving; it is his
very life. But for that tyrannous longing, would Satan have found
companions? There is a whole poem yet to be written, a first part of
_Paradise Lost_; Milton's poem is only the apology for the revolt."

"It would be the Iliad of Corruption," said Lucien.

"Well, I am alone, I live alone. If I wear the priest's habit, I have
not a priest's heart. I like to devote myself to some one; that is my
weakness. That is my life, that is how I came to be a priest. I am not
afraid of ingratitude, and I am grateful. The Church is nothing to me;
it is an idea. I am devoted to the King of Spain, but you cannot give
affection to a King of Spain; he is my protector, he towers above me.
I want to love my creature, to mould him, fashion him to my use, and
love him as a father loves his child. I shall drive in your tilbury,
my boy, enjoy your success with women, and say to myself, 'This fine
young fellow, this Marquis de Rubempre, my creation whom I have
brought into this great world, is my very Self; his greatness is my
doing, he speaks or is silent with my voice, he consults me in
everything.' The Abbe de Vermont felt thus for Marie-Antoinette."

"He led her to the scaffold."

"He did not love the Queen," said the priest. "HE only loved the Abbe
de Vermont."

"Must I leave desolation behind me?"

"I have money, you shall draw on me."

"I would do a great deal just now to rescue David