Then he turned quickly towards Charley, who, looking at the procession, then at the tailor, then back again at the procession, smiled.
Charley was hardly conscious of what he did.

His mind had ranged far beyond this scene to the large issues which these symbols represented.
Was it one universal self-deception?
Was this "religion" the pathetic, the soul-breaking make-believe of mortality?
So he smiled--at himself, at his own soul, which seemed alone in this play, the skeleton in armour, the thing that did not belong.

His own words written that fateful day before he died at the Cote Dorion came to him: "Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key?
Death, only Death, thou, the ultimate teacher, Wilt show it to me!" He was suddenly startled from his reverie, through which the procession was moving--a cloud of witnesses.

It was the voice of Louis Trudel, sharp and piercing: "Don't you believe in God and the Son of God ?" "God knows!" answered Charley slowly in reply--an involuntary exclamation of helplessness, an automatic phrase deflected from its first significance to meet a casual need of the mind.

Yet it seemed like satire, like a sardonic, even vulgar, humour.