religious circles to help on this revival of mysticism, in the mad hope
of hastening the rout of science. Monseigneur Martha, who was
all-powerful at the Catholic University, said to his intimates, however,
that three generations of devout and docile pupils would be needed before
the Church would again be absolute sovereign of France.

"Well, as for the Ecole Normale," continued Francois, "I assure you that
you are mistaken. There are a few narrow bigots there, no doubt. But even
in the Section of Letters the majority of the students are sceptics at
bottom--sceptics of discreet and good-natured average views. Of course
they are professors before everything else, though they are a trifle
ashamed of it; and, as professors, they judge things with no little
pedantic irony, devoured by a spirit of criticism, and quite incapable of
creating anything themselves. I should certainly be astonished to see the
man of genius whom we await come out of their ranks. To my thinking,
indeed, it would be preferable that some barbarian genius, neither well
read nor endowed with critical faculty, or power of weighing and shading
things, should come and open the next century with a hatchet stroke,
sending up a fine flare of truth and reality.... But, as for my
comrades of the Scientific Section, I assure you that neo-Catholicism and
Mysticism and Occultism, and every other branch of the fashionable
phantasmagoria trouble them very little indeed. They are not making a
religion of science, they remain open to doubt on many points; but they
are mostly men of very clear and firm minds, whose passion is the
acquirement of certainty, and who are ever absorbed in the investigations
which continue throughout the whole vast field of human knowledge. They
haven't flinched, they have remained Positivists, or Evolutionists, or
Determinists, and have set their faith in observation and experiment to
help on the final conquest of the world."

Francois himself was growing excited, as he thus confessed his faith
while strolling along the quiet sunlit garden paths. "The young indeed!"
he resumed. "Do people know them? It makes us laugh when we see all sorts
of apostles fighting for us, trying to attract us, and saying that we are
white or black or grey, according to the hue which they require for the
triumph of their particular ideas! The young, the real ones, why, they're
in the schools, the laboratories and the libraries. It's they who work
and who'll bri