g for lights?" said the footman, coming in with the
candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme de Langeais still lay
on her couch; she was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had
not been there.

"Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sublime kindness in
his voice. "Indeed, I would not have you without religion----"

"It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a conscience,"
she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. "I thank you in God's
name."

The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as
if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one
despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her forever without
another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within
herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial
torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any
sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity
of things to say; so long as she has not delivered herself of them,
she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of
something incomplete. Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her
mind. She took up her parable and said:

"We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to think. It
would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a religion which
permits us to love beyond the grave. I set Christian sentiments aside;
you cannot understand them. Let me simply speak to you of expediency.
Would you forbid a woman at court the table of the Lord when it is
customary to take the sacrament at Easter? People must certainly do
something for their party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do,
will never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be
a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of
logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted ideologists.
If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something
to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its
consequences. And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to
begin by going ourselves? Religion, you see, Armand, is a bond uniting
all the conservative principles which enable the rich to live in
tranquillity. Religion and the rights of property are intimately
connected. It is certainly a finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of
morality than by fear of the scaffold, as in the time of th