“Yes, like a drowning man. Three times he comes to the surface to breathe, but the fourth time he remains below. Or, like an animal chewing the cud; for some time there are small eructations, re-mastications, and then everything is ejected through the gullet, after going through the circle.”
“Do you believe in the return of the Golden Age?”
“Yes I believe like Thomas, when I have seen. And I have seen. At the moment, which I now recall, on the Champs du Mars,—then I saw! We had a forefeeling of the future, we were sure that we had had a vision of some new order of things, but were uncertain when it would be established.”
“How long are we to wait?”
“We should not sit still and wait, but work! That makes the time pass. The learned say that it took a million years for the Hill of Montmartre to be deposited from the water. Now history is only three thousand years old; for three thousand years more, men can reflect over their past, and perhaps in six thousand an improvement may be noticeable! We are too proud and impatient, sire. And yet things move quickly. America was discovered only three hundred years ago, and now it is an European republic. Africa, India, China, Japan are opened, and soon the whole world will belong to Europe. Do you see the promise to Abraham, ‘In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,’ is on the way to fulfilment—on the way, I say.”
“The promise to Abraham?”
“Yes! Have not Christians, Jews, and Muhammedans a share in the promise?”
“Christians of Abraham’s seed?”
“Through Christ, who was of Judah, we are spiritually Abraham’s seed. One faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all!”
“I have listened to you, and must say that your faith is great, and has delivered you.”