But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:
"Saint Augustine, in his True Religion, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory, in his Morals, Chapter XXIV; Isidore——"
"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry."
"In his treatise on The Greatest Good, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on Job——"
"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on Faith, Book II, Chapter III. Those, I think, are sufficiently weighty authorities, and there is nothing for it, Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led you astray is that you have not duly considered my nature, which is free, active, and mobile, like that of all the angels, and that you have merely observed the grace and felicity with which you deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer possessed no less, yet he rebelled."
"But what on earth are you rebelling for?" asked Maurice.
"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah has already asked, before you: 'Quomodo cecidisti de cœlo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?' Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to win dominion over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim revolted through pride. As for me, it is science that has inspired me with the generous desire for freedom. Finding myself near you, Maurice, in a house containing one of the vastest libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading and a love of study. While, fordone with the toils of a sensual life, you lay sunk in heavy slumber, I surrounded myself with books, I studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of the library, under the busts of the great men of antiquity, sometimes at the far end of the garden, in the room in the summer-house next to your own."
On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded with laughter and beat the pillow with his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable mirth.
"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged papa's library and drove poor old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic."