If he had dreamt that book, and had just passed through that terrible crisis, it was because sentiment had once again overcome reason within him.

It was his mother, so to say, who had wept in his heart, who had filled him with an irresistible desire to relieve the wretched and prevent the massacres which seemed near at hand; and his passion for charity had thus swept aside the scruples of his intelligence.

But it was his father's voice that he now heard, lofty and bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all sovereignty.

As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense.

Reason alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science.