On the promenade along the ramparts that evening AbbÉ Lantaigne, head of the high seminary, fell in with M. Bergeret, a professor of literature who was considered a man of remarkable, but eccentric character. M. Lantaigne forgave him his scepticism and chatted with him willingly, whenever he met him under the elm-trees on the Mall. On his side, M. Bergeret had no objection to studying the mind of an intelligent priest. They both knew that their conversations on a seat in the promenade were equally displeasing to the dean of the Faculty and to the Archbishop. But AbbÉ Lantaigne knew nothing about worldly prudence, and M. Bergeret, very weary, discouraged, and disillusioned, had given up caring for fruitless considerations of policy.

Sceptical within the bounds of decorum and good taste, the assiduous devotions of his wife and the endless catechisms of his daughters had resulted in his being impeached of clericalism in the ministerial bureaux, whilst certain speeches that had been attributed to him were used against him, both by professing Catholics and professional patriots. Foiled in his ambitions, he still meant to live in his own way, and having failed to learn how to please, tried discreetly to displease.

On this peaceful and radiant evening M. Bergeret, seeing the head of the high seminary coming along his usual road, advanced several paces to meet the priest and joined him under the first elm-trees on the Mall.

“To me the place is happy where I meet you,” said AbbÉ Lantaigne, who loved, before a university man, to air his harmless literary affectations.

In a few very vague phrases they made a mutual confession of the great pity aroused in them both by the world in which they lived. It was AbbÉ Lantaigne alone who deplored the decay of this ancient city, so rich, during the Middle Ages, in knowledge and thought, and now subject to a few petty tradesmen and freemasons. In frank opposition to this, M. Bergeret said:

“In days gone by men were just what they are now; that is to say, moderately good and moderately bad.”

“Not so!” answered M. Lantaigne. “Men were vigorous in character and strong in doctrine when Raymond the Great, surnamed the balsamic doctor, taught in this town the epitome of human knowledge.”

The professor and the priest sat down on a stone bench where two old men, pale-faced and decrepit, were already sitting without saying a word. In front of this bench, green meadows, wreathed in light mist, stretched gently downwards to the poplars that fringed the river.

“Monsieur l’abbÉ,” said the professor, “I have, like everybody else, turned over the pages of the Hortus and the Thesaurus of Raymond the Great in the municipal library. Moreover, I have read the new book that AbbÉ Cazeaux has devoted to the balsamic doctor. Now, what struck me in that book…”

“AbbÉ Cazeaux is one of my pupils,” interrupted M. Lantaigne. “His book on Raymond the Great is based on facts, which is praiseworthy; it is founded on theology, which is still more praiseworthy and rare, for theology is lost in this decadent France, which was the greatest of the nations as long as she was the most theological.”

“This book of M. Cazeaux’s,” answered M. Bergeret, “appeared to me to be interesting from several points of view. For want of a knowledge of theology I lost myself in it more than once. Yet I fancied I could see in it that the blessed Raymond, rigidly orthodox monk as he was, claimed for the teacher the right of professing two contradictory opinions on the same subject, the one theological and in accordance with revelation, the other purely human and based on experience or reason. The balsamic doctor, whose statue adorns so sternly the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace, maintained, according to what I have been able to understand, that one and the same man may deny, as an observer or as a disputant, the truths which, as a Christian, he believes and confesses. And it seemed to me that your pupil, M. Cazeaux, approved of a system so strange.”

AbbÉ Lantaigne, quite animated by what he had just heard, drew his red silk handkerchief from his pocket, unfurled it like a flag, and with flushed face and mouth wide open flung himself fearlessly on the challenge thrown down.

“Monsieur Bergeret, as to whether one can have, on the same subject, two distinct opinions, the one theological and of divine origin, the other purely rational or experimental and of human origin, that is a question which I answer in the affirmative. And I am going to prove to you the truth of this apparent contradiction by a most common instance. When, seated in your study, before your table loaded with books and papers, you exclaim, ‘It is incredible! I have just this moment put my paper-knife on this table and now I do not see it there. I see it, I’m sure I see it, and yet I no longer see it,’ when you think in this way, Monsieur Bergeret, you have two contradictory opinions with respect to the same object, one that your paper-knife is on the table because it ought to be there: that opinion is based on reason; the other that your paper-knife is not on the table, because you do not see it there: that opinion is based on experience. There you have two irreconcilable opinions on the same subject. And they are simultaneous. You affirm at the same time both the presence and the absence of the paper-knife. You exclaim, ‘It is there, I am sure of it,’ at the very moment you are proving it is not there.”

And, having finished his demonstration, AbbÉ Lantaigne waved his chequered, snuff-besprinkled silk handkerchief, like the flaming banner of scholasticism.

But the professor of literature was not convinced. He had no difficulty in showing the emptiness of this sophism. He replied quite gently in the rather weak voice that he habitually husbanded, that, in looking for his paper-knife, he experienced fear and hope, by turns and not simultaneously, the result of an uncertainty which could not last; for it ended by his making sure whether the knife was on the table or not.

“There is nothing, monsieur l’abbÉ,” added he, “nothing in this instance of the boxwood knife that is applicable to the contradictory judgment which the blessed Raymond, or M. Cazeaux, or you yourself, might form on such or such a fact recorded in the Bible, when you state that it is at the same time both true and false. Allow me, in my turn, to give you an instance. I choose,—not, of course, in order to ensnare you, but because this incident comes of its own accord into my mind,—I choose the story of Joshua causing the sun to stand still.…”

M. Bergeret passed his tongue over his lips and smiled. For in truth he was, in the secret places of his soul, a Voltairean:

“… Joshua causing the sun to stand still. Will you tell me, straight out, monsieur l’abbÉ, that Joshua made the sun stand still and did not make it stand still?”

The head of the high seminary had by no means an air of embarrassment. Splendid controversialist as he was, he turned to his opponent with flashing eyes and heaving breast.

“After every reservation has been expressly made with respect to the true interpretation, both literal and spiritual, of the passage in Judges which you attack and against which so many unbelievers have blindly dashed themselves before you, I will reply to you fearlessly. Yes, I have two distinct opinions as to the interpretation of this miracle. I believe as a natural philosopher, for reasons drawn from physics, that is to say, from observation, that the earth turns round a motionless sun. And as a theologian I believe that Joshua caused the sun to stand still. There is here a contradiction. But this contradiction is not irreconcilable. I will prove it to you at once. For the idea which we form of the sun is purely human; it only concerns man and could not be applicable to God. For man, the sun does not turn round the earth. I grant it, and I am willing to decide in favour of Copernicus. But I will not go so far as to force God to become a Copernican like myself, and I shall not inquire whether, for God, the sun turns or does not turn round the earth. To speak truly, I had no need of the text of Judges in order to know that our human astronomy is not the astronomy of God. Speculations as to time, number and space do not embrace infinity, and it is a mad idea to wish to entangle the Holy Spirit in a physical or mathematical difficulty.”

“Then,” asked the professor, “you admit that, even in mathematics, it is permissible to have two contradictory opinions, the one human, the other divine?”

“I will not risk being reduced to that extremity,” answered AbbÉ Lantaigne. “There is in mathematics an exactitude which practically reconciles it with absolute truth. Numbers, on the contrary, are only dangerous because the reason, being tempted to seek in them for its own principle, runs the risk of going so far astray as to see nothing in the universe save a system of numbers. This error has been condemned by the Church. Yet I will answer you boldly that human mathematics are not divine mathematics. Doubtless, however, it would not be possible for one to contradict the other, and I prefer to believe that you do not wish to make me say that for God three and three can make nine. But we do not know all the properties of numbers, and God does.

“I hear that there are priests, regarded as eminent, who maintain that science ought to agree with theology. I detest this impertinence, I will say this impiety, for there is a certain impiety in making the immutable and absolute truth walk in harmony with that imperfect and provisional truth which is called science. This madness of assimilating reality to appearance, the body to the soul, has produced a multitude of miserable, baneful opinions through which the apologists of this period have allowed their foolhardy feebleness to be seen. One, a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus, admits the plurality of inhabited worlds; he allows that intelligent beings may inhabit Mars and Venus, provided that to the earth there be reserved the privilege of the Cross, by which it again becomes unique and peculiar in the Creation. The other, a man who not without some merit occupied in the Sorbonne the chair of theology which has since been abolished, grants that the geologist can trace the vestiges of preadamites and reduces the Genesis of the Bible to the organisation of one province of the universe for the sojourn of Adam and his seed. O dull folly! O pitiable boldness! O ancient novelties, already condemned a hundred times! O violation of sacred unity! How much better, like Raymond the Great and his historian, to proclaim that science and religion ought no more to be confused with each other than the relative and the absolute, the finite and the infinite, the darkness and the light!”

“Monsieur l’abbÉ,” said the professor, “you despise science.”

The priest shook his head.

“Not so, Monsieur Bergeret, not so! I hold, on the contrary, according to the example of Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the great doctors, that science and philosophy ought to be held in high esteem in the schools.

“One does not despise science without despising reason; one does not despise reason without despising man; one does not despise man without insulting God. The rash scepticism which lays the blame on human reason is the first step towards that criminal scepticism that defies the divine mysteries. I value science as a gift which comes to us from God. But if God has given us science, he has not given us His science. His geometry is not ours. Ours speculates on one plane or in space; His works in infinitude. He has not deceived us: that is why I consider that there is a true human science. He has not taught us all: that is why I declare the powerlessness of this science, even though true, to agree with the truth of truths. And this discrepancy, every time that it occurs between the two, I see without fear: it proves nothing, neither against heaven, nor earth.”

M. Bergeret confessed that this system seemed to him as clever as it was bold, and ultimately consonant with the interests of the faith.

“But,” added he, “it is not our Archbishop’s doctrine. In his pastoral letters, Monseigneur Charlot speaks voluntarily of the truths of religion being confirmed by the discoveries of science, and especially by the experiments of M. Pasteur.”

“Oh!” answered AbbÉ Lantaigne in a nasal voice that hissed with scorn, “His Eminence observes, in philosophy at least, the vow of evangelical poverty.”

At the moment when this phrase was lashing the air beneath the quincunxes, a corpulent great-coat, capped by a wide clerical hat, passed in front of the bench.

“Speak lower, monsieur l’abbÉ,” said the professor; “AbbÉ Guitrel hears you.”