“Good heavens! Have you too become a freethinker? Shoemaker, stick to your last! If you are a priest, then be a priest, but don’t try to make a botch of my work. And don’t think you need to flatter me for an increase of wages. But let us return to Frederick:”
“‘History rolls on like an avalanche; the race improves, the conditions of life become easier, but men are still the same—faithless, unthankful, criminal; and he just as well as the unjust go to hell. I do not dare to put down on paper the conclusions to be drawn from this observation, for that would be to acquit Lazarus, and to crucify Christ.... Great men have little weaknesses or rather great weaknesses. We, Monsieur, have been no angels, but Providence has used us for great objects. Is it a matter of indifference to Providence whom it takes in hand, or how we live in the flesh, provided we keep the spirit uppermost? Sursum corda!’”
“What do you say to that, Abbé?”
“The Law cannot be fulfilled, says St. Paul, but the Law rouses the sense of guilt, and therefore it is only imposed in order to drive us to grace.”
“That was not such a stupid remark of Paul’s. But I should like to add,—in the prison of the flesh grows the longing for liberation: ‘Who shall deliver me, wretched man, from this body of sin?’ Yes, Abbé, Vanitas vanitatum! Vanitas! You are young, but you must not despise the old man when he turns round and spits behind him all the unpleasantness of his past life. Might but a generation be born which knew at once the value of life, as long as a mud-bath is not part of the treatment!”
Just then a dark lean man came tortuously along the garden path.
“See! there is my Jesuit!” said Voltaire.
The old man kept on friendly terms with a Jesuit, partly because the Pope had expelled them, partly because Frederick the Great had patronised them; but his chief object was to have someone to dispute with. Perhaps also he wished to show his freedom from prejudice, for he did not like the uncongenial man.
“Now, you child of Satan!” was the old man’s greeting, “what mischief have you got in your mind? You look so maliciously pleased!”
“I come from Geneva,” answered the Jesuit with an evil smile.