And the voice became more pressing,
"Then you admit original sin?"
"I am obliged to admit it, because it exists. What are heredity and atavism, save, under another name, the terrible sin of the beginning?"
"And does it appear to you just that innocent generations should make amends now and always for the sin of the first man?"
And as Durtal did not reply, the voice insinuated gently,
"This law is so iniquitous that it seems as if the Creator were ashamed of it, and that in order to punish Himself for His ferocity, and not to make Himself for ever execrated by His creature, He wished to suffer on the Cross, and expiate His crime in the person of His own Son."
"But," cried Durtal, exasperated, "God could not commit a crime and punish Himself: were that so, Jesus would be the Redeemer of His Father, and not ours; it is madness!"
Little by little he recovered his balance; he recited slowly the Apostles' Creed, while the objections which demolished it, pressed one after the other within him.
"There is one fact certain," he said to himself, for in all this tumult, he was perfectly lucid, "that for the moment we are two persons in one. I can follow my reasonings, and I hear on the other side, the sophisms my double breathes in me. This duality has never appeared so clear to me."
And the attack grew feebler, on this reflection; it might have been believed that the enemy now discovered was beating a retreat.