Before putting it into his valise he retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas changing as by a sudden mental revolution.

The work was, however, a very modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor's degree containing little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state of human knowledge.

And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon Pierre's reverie with the energy of sovereign power.

Not only was Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions, every hypothesis of the divine tottered and fell.

Only that little school book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient faith was left.