n
arm-chair, tucking his hands into his cincture. And when, in answer to
his question as to whether Durtal were not too dull at Chartres, the
Parisian replied, "It seems to me that I live more slowly, and yet am
not such a burthen to myself," the Abbe went on,--

"What you must feel painfully is the lack of intellectual society; you,
who in Paris lived in the world of letters--how can you endure the
atmosphere of this provincial town?"

Durtal laughed.

"The world of letters! No, Monsieur l'Abbe, I should not be likely to
regret that, for I had given it up many years before I came to live
here; and besides, I assure you it is impossible to be intimate with
those train-bands of literature and remain decent. A man must
choose--them or honest folks; slander or silence; for their speciality
is to eliminate every charitable idea, and above all to cure a man of
friendship in the winking of an eye."

"Really?"

"Yes, by adopting a homoeopathic pharmacopoeia which still makes use
of the foulest matter--the extract of wood-lice, the venom of snakes,
the poison of the cockchafer, the secretions of the skunk and the matter
from pustules, all disguised in sugar of milk to conceal their taste and
appearance; the world of letters, in the same way, triturates the most
disgusting things to get them swallowed without raising your gorge.
There is an incessant manipulation of neighbours' gossip and play-box
tittle-tattle, all wrapped up in perfidious good taste to mask their
flavour and smell.

"These pills of foulness, exhibited in the required doses, act like
detergents on the soul, which they almost immediately purge of all
trustfulness. I had enough of this regimen, which acted on me only too
successfully, and I thought it well to escape from it."

"But the pious world, too, is not absolutely free from gossip," said the
Abbe, smiling.

"No doubt, and I am well aware that devotion does not always sweeten the
mind, but--

"The truth is," said he after reflection, "that the assiduous practice
of religion generally results in some intense effects on the soul. Only
they may be of two kinds. Either it develops the soul's taint and
evolves in it the final ferments which putrefy it once for all, or it
purifies the spirit and makes it clean and clear and exquisite. It may
produce hypocrites or good and saintly people; there is really no
medium.

"But when such divine husbandry has completely cleansed souls, how
guileless and how