Durtal lowered his head, for this argument dismasted him; all the replies which could be imagined were remarkably weak, and the least feeble, that which consists in denying to ourselves the right to judge because we only see the details of the divine plan, because we can possess no general view of it cannot avail against that terrible phrase of Schopenhauer: "If God made the world I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart!"
"There is no haggling in the matter," he said to himself. "I can quite understand that sorrow is the true disinfectant of souls, yet I am obliged to ask myself why the Creator has not invented a less atrocious way of purifying us?
"Ah! when I think of the sufferings shut up in madhouses, and hospital wards, I am revolted, and inclined to doubt everything.
"If, again, grief were an antiseptic for future misdeeds or a detersive for past faults, one might again understand, but now it falls indifferently on the bad and on the good; it is blind. The best proof is the Virgin who was without spot, and who had not like her Son to expiate for us. She consequently ought not to be punished; yet she too underwent at the foot of Calvary the punishment exacted by this horrible law.
"Good; but then," replied Durtal, after a silence of reflection, "if the innocent Virgin has given us an example, by what right do we who are culpable dare to complain?
"No; we must therefore resolve to dwell in darkness, to live surrounded by enigmas. Money, love, nothing is clear; chance if it exist is as mysterious as Providence, and indeed still more so; it is inexplicable. God is at least an origin of the unknown, a key.
"An origin which is itself another secret, a key which opens nothing!
"Ah! it is irritating," he said to himself, "to be thus harassed in every sense. Enough of it; besides these are questions which a theologian is alone able to discuss; I am unarmed, the game is not equal; I will not answer any more."
And he could not but hear a vague laughter which arose in him.
He quitted the garden, and directed his steps towards the chapel, but the fear of being seized again by the madness of blasphemy turned him away from it. Knowing not whither to go, he regained his cell, saying to himself, that he ought not to wrangle thus; yes, but how could he help hearing the cavils which rose he knew not whence? He almost shouted aloud: "Be silent, let the other speak!"