by movements like the
heaving and pitching of a brig.

"Now, did you murder them?" Emile asked him.

"Capital punishment is going to be abolished, they say, in favor of
the Revolution of July," answered Taillefer, raising his eyebrows with
drunken sagacity.

"Don't they rise up before you in dreams at times?" Raphael persisted.

"There's a statute of limitations," said the murderer-Croesus.

"And on his tombstone," Emile began, with a sardonic laugh, "the
stonemason will carve 'Passer-by, accord a tear, in memory of one that's
here!' Oh," he continued, "I would cheerfully pay a hundred sous to
any mathematician who would prove the existence of hell to me by an
algebraical equation."

He flung up a coin and cried:

"Heads for the existence of God!"

"Don't look!" Raphael cried, pouncing upon it. "Who knows? Suspense is
so pleasant."

"Unluckily," Emile said, with burlesque melancholy, "I can see no
halting-place between the unbeliever's arithmetic and the papal _Pater
noster_. Pshaw! let us drink. _Trinq_ was, I believe, the oracular
answer of the _dive bouteille_ and the final conclusion of Pantagruel."

"We owe our arts and monuments to the _Pater noster_, and our knowledge,
too, perhaps; and a still greater benefit--modern government--whereby a
vast and teeming society is wondrously represented by some five hundred
intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to
_Civilization_, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible
figure of the _King_, that sham Providence, reared by man between
himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like
a barren skeleton. What do you say?"

"I am thinking of the seas of blood shed by Catholicism." Emile replied,
quite unimpressed. "It has drained our hearts and veins dry to make a
mimic deluge. No matter! Every man who thinks must range himself beneath
the banner of Christ, for He alone has consummated the triumph of spirit
over matter; He alone has revealed to us, like a poet, an intermediate
world that separates us from the Deity."

"Believest thou?" asked Raphael with an unaccountable drunken smile.
"Very good; we must not commit ourselves; so we will drink the
celebrated toast, _Diis ignotis_!"

And they drained the chalice filled up with science, carbonic acid gas,
perfumes, poetry, and incredulity.

"If the gentlemen will go to the drawing-room, coffee is ready for
them," said the major-domo.

There was scar