"Dame, mon ami! It costs nothing."
"It is cowardly."
"Ah, well, my friend, I am a coward. Let us discuss something less gruesome. This charming Natalie! You will let her come to me, now that she is to leave the barbarians?"
"I, too, am a coward. I fear Père Martin."
"Believe me, my friend," said the Marquise, more seriously than she had yet spoken, "you do wrong. Women need religion. They must adore; they must sacrifice themselves to the object of their worship. As a rule they have a choice. They may worship God or they may worship Love. To one or the other they will devote themselves or miss their destiny. Which is less dangerous?"
"There is danger everywhere," replied the philosopher, discontentedly. "But, indeed, Louise, this matter is more serious to me, the unbeliever, than to you, the Christian. You Latins do not comprehend the reverence we of a different race assign to principle. I think it wrong, immoral, to expose my daughter to an atmosphere of falsehood."
"Monsieur, you are unjust to us Latins; and worse, you are impolite."
"I am serious. I think Christianity the curse of mankind."
"And you object to it. That is magnanimous."
"Natalie has been left in total ignorance of all religion."