And it is still more due to fashion, the whim of the times which, as you have very well put it, regards scientific truth as bad taste, something graceless and altogether too brutal for light and distinguished minds.

Consequently, a young fellow of any shrewdness who desires to please is perforce won over to the new spirit." "The new spirit!" interrupted Pierre, unable to restrain himself.

"Oh! that is no mere innocent, passing fashion, it is a tactical device and a terrible one, an offensive return of the powers of darkness against those of light, of servitude against free thought, truth and justice." Then, as the young man again looked at him with growing astonishment, he relapsed into silence.

The figure of Monseigneur Martha had risen before his eyes, and he fancied he could again hear the prelate at the Madeleine, striving to win Paris over to the policy of Rome, to that spurious neo-Catholicism which, with the object of destroying democracy and science, accepted such portions of them as it could adapt to its own views.

This was indeed the supreme struggle.