This idea causes the rejection of many a diamond with a flaw by girls who, as women, fall in love with paste.
Now, Celeste had seen in Felix, not irreligion, but indifference to matters of religion.

Like most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great naturalists, he had subjected religion to reason; he recognized a problem in it as insoluble as the squaring of the circle.
Deist "in petto," he lived in the religion of most Frenchmen, not attaching more importance to it than he did to the new laws promulgated in July.

It was necessary to have a God in heaven, just as they set up a bust of the king at the mayor's office.

Felix Phellion, a worthy son of his father, had never drawn the slightest veil over his opinions or his conscience; he allowed Celeste to read into them with the candor and the inattention of a student of problems.

The young girl, on her side, professed a horror for atheism, and her conscience assured her that a deist was cousin-germain to an atheist.
"Have you thought, Felix, of doing what you promised me ?" asked Celeste, as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.
"No, my dear Celeste," replied Felix.
"Oh! to have broken his word!" she cried, softly.
"But to have kept it would have been a profanation," said Felix.