e old world away beneath the accumulation of
its crimes. Convinced that injustice had attained its apogee, that but
little time remained before the vengeful hour when the poor would compel
the rich to part with their possessions, he took pleasure in dreaming of
a peaceful solution, a kiss of peace exchanged by all men, a return to
the pure morals of the Gospel as it had been preached by Jesus.

Doubts tortured him at the outset. Could olden Catholicism be
rejuvenated, brought back to the youth and candour of primitive
Christianity? He set himself to study things, reading and questioning,
and taking a more and more passionate interest in that great problem of
Catholic socialism which had made no little noise for some years past.
And quivering with pity for the wretched, ready as he was for the miracle
of fraternisation, he gradually lost such scruples as intelligence might
have prompted, and persuaded himself that once again Christ would work
the redemption of suffering humanity. At last a precise idea took
possession of him, a conviction that Catholicism purified, brought back
to its original state, would prove the one pact, the supreme law that
might save society by averting the sanguinary crisis which threatened it.

When he had quitted Lourdes two years previously, revolted by all its
gross idolatry, his faith for ever dead, but his mind worried by the
everlasting need of the divine which tortures human creatures, a cry had
arisen within him from the deepest recesses of his being: "A new
religion! a new religion!" And it was this new religion, or rather this
revived religion which he now fancied he had discovered in his desire to
work social salvation--ensuring human happiness by means of the only
moral authority that was erect, the distant outcome of the most admirable
implement ever devised for the government of nations.

During the period of slow development through which Pierre passed, two
men, apart from Abbe Rose, exercised great influence on him. A benevolent
action brought him into intercourse with Monseigneur Bergerot, a bishop
whom the Pope had recently created a cardinal, in reward for a whole life
of charity, and this in spite of the covert opposition of the papal
_curia_ which suspected the French prelate to be a man of open mind,
governing his diocese in paternal fashion. Pierre became more impassioned
by his intercourse with this apostle, this shepherd of souls, in whom he
detected one of the good sim