off opinions, in some respects unreasonable, had its
advantages. Because a Paris flibbertigibbet disposes with a joke of
creeds, from which Pascal, with all his reasoning powers, could not
shake himself free, it must not be concluded that the Gavroche is
superior to Pascal. I confess that I at times feel humiliated to think
that it cost me five or six years of arduous research, and the study
of Hebrew, the Semitic languages, Gesenius, and Ewald to arrive at
the result which this urchin achieves in a twinkling. These pilings
of Pelion upon Ossa seem to me, when looked at in this light, a mere
waste of time. But Pere Hardouin observed that he had not got up at
four o'clock every morning for forty years to think as all the world
thought. So I am loth to admit that I have been at so much pains to
fight a mere _chimaera bombinans_. No, I cannot think that my labours
have been all in vain, nor that victory is to be won in theology as
cheaply as the scoffers would have us believe. There are, in reality,
but few people who have a right not to believe in Christianity. If
the great mass of people only knew how strong is the net woven by the
theologians, how difficult it is to break the threads of it, how much
erudition has been spent upon it, and what a power of criticism is
required to unravel it all.... I have noticed that some men of talent
who have set themselves too late in life the task have been taken in
the toils and have not been able to extricate themselves.

My tutors taught me something which was infinitely more valuable than
criticism or philosophic wisdom; they taught me to love truth, to
respect reason, and to see the serious side of life. This is the only
part in me which has never changed. I left their care with my moral
sense so well prepared to stand any test, that this precious jewel
passed uninjured through the crucible of Parisian frivolity. I was so
well prepared for the good and for the true that I could not possibly
have followed a career which was not devoted to the things of the
mind. My teachers rendered me so unfit for any secular work that I was
perforce embarked upon a spiritual career. The intellectual life
was the only noble one in my eyes; and mercenary cares seemed to me
servile and unworthy.

I have never departed from the sound and wholesome programme which my
masters sketched out for me. I no longer believe Christianity to be
the supernatural summary of all that man can know; but I still bel