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"They are no worse than the people who deny God and Creation," said Carhaix. "God is immanent in His creatures. He is their Life principle, the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says Saint Paul. He has His personal existence, being the 'I AM,' as Moses says.
"The Holy Ghost, through Christ in glory, will be immanent in all beings. He will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialize himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbé Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext of becoming a child the better to symbolize the simple, naïf love of the Paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse."
"But," said Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'-to drop into the theological vernacular."
"Yes, he will purify us soul and body."
"How will he purify our bodies?"
"The action of the Paraclete," the astrologer struck in, "will extend to the principle of generation. The divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the Holy Bible says. This was the doctrine of the prophet Vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages. The doctrine has been continued and amplified, since Vintras's death, by his successor, Dr. Joha
"Then there is to be Paradise on earth," said Des Hermies.
"Yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love."
"You've got me all mixed up," said Durtal. "Now you a
"There is a distinction," answered Gévingey, "between the coming of the Paraclete and the victorious return of Christ. They occur in the order named. First a society must be recreated, embraced by the third Hypostasis, by Love, in order that Jesus may descend, as He has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in His image."
"What rôle is the Pope to play?"
"Ah, that is one of the most curious points of the Joha
"It is an axiom of theology that the spirit of Peter lives in his successors. It will live in them, more or less hidden, until the longed-for expansion of the Holy Ghost. Then John, who has been held in reserve, as the Gospel says, will begin his ministry of love and will live in the souls of the new popes."
"I don't understand the utility of a pope when Jesus is to be visible," said Des Hermies.
"To tell the truth, there is no use in having one, and the papacy is to exist only during the epoch reserved for the effluence of the divine Paraclete. The day on which, in a shower of meteors, Jesus appears, the pontificate of Rome ceases."
"Without going more deeply into questions which we could discuss the rest of our lives," said Durtal, "I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices."
"All the more reason," Carhaix rejoined, "why society-if it is as you have described it-should fall to pieces. I, too, think it is putrefied, its bones ulcerated, its flesh dropping off. It can neither be poulticed nor cured, it must be interred and a new one born. And who but God can accomplish such a miracle?"
"If we admit," said Des Hermies, "that the infamousness of the times is transitory, it is self-evident that only the intervention of a God can wash it away; for neither socialism nor any other chimera of the ignorant and hate-filled workers will modify human nature and reform the peoples. These tasks are above human forces."
"And the time awaited by Joha
"The promises are explicit and ca
"It's getting late," said Des Hermies, "time we were going."
While they were putting on their coats, Carhaix questioned Durtal. "What do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of Christ?"
"I hope for nothing at all."
"I pity you. Really, you believe in no future amelioration?"
"I believe, alas, that a dotard Heaven maunders over an exhausted Earth."
The bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head.
When they had left Gévingey, Des Hermies, after walking in silence for some time, said, "You are not astonished that all the events spoken of tonight happened at Lyons." And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, he continued, "You see I am well acquainted with Lyons. People's brains there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from the Rhone. That city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of modern cities. But Lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds. That's where Vintras died, the one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet Elijah was incarnate. That's where Naundorff found his last partisans. That is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotière you can have a person bewitched for a louis. Add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive of bourgeois bigotry.
" Lyons is celebrated for delicatessen, silk, and churches. At the top of every hill-and there's a hill every block-is a chapel or a convent, and Notre Dame de Fourvière dominates them all. From a distance this pile looks like an eighteenth century dresser turned upside down, but the interior, which is in process of completion, is amazing. You ought to go and take a look at it some day. You will see the most extraordinary jumble of Assyrian, Roman, Gothic, and God knows what, jacked together by Bossan, the only architect for a century who has known how to create a cathedral interior. The nave glitters with inlays and marble, with bronze and gold. Statues of angels diversify the rows of columns and break up, with impressive grace, the known harmonies of line. It's Asiatic and barbarous, and reminds one of the architecture shown in Gustave Moreau's Hérodiade.