“The old man smiled at my antiquarian enthusiasm, and merely remarked, that Meses and the chronologists had better be looking out for their laurels, else the parvenus of the present day would not leave many to be gathered.
“ ‘It is my invincible conviction,’ said I, ‘that these sculptures were wrought many ages prior to the making of the pottery found beneath the valley of the Nile; and that the inscriptions on yonder porphyritic tablets were engraved there a hundred centuries before the date of Adam—an individual, by the way, whom I certainly regard as having had an origin and existence in the imaginations of ancient poets, a mere myth, handed down the night of Time as an heirloom to the ages—at least all such as had a taste for things they could not comprehend—and had an existence there only!’
“ ‘Then you do not entertain the belief that all men sprang from only one source?’
“ ‘Yes—no. Yes; because God created all. No; because there are at least ten separate and distinct families of human kind!’
“ ‘But may not all these differences spring from climate and the diverse localizations and circumstances attending upon a wide separation of the constituents of an original family?’
“ ‘No; because that will not account for different languages, physical differences, and anatomical diversities. It is utterly impossible for any sane man to believe that the Jaloff and other Negroes, the Maquaas and other Indians, the Mongols and other Tartars, the Kanakas and other Islanders, the European and other Caucasians, all sprang from one pair. Indeed the thing is so plain, from a merely physical point of view, without entering at all into the mental and psychical merits of the case, that he who runs may read. Observe, I have said nothing about superiority or inferiority, merely content to let Physiology speak for herself.’
“ ‘Well,’ said Ravalette, ‘you inform me that you desire to learn, being already learned to some extent. The views you entertain upon the Past are, in some sense, consonant with my own; and if you are willing to be taught, I am willing to instruct; and in any case, no harm can come of the abrasion of ideas, but perchance much of good.’
“I was delighted to hear Ravalette talk in this manner; for I felt that he was in some sort, notwithstanding our relative disparity of years, a congenial spirit, and I longed for him to unfold to me the rich fabric of his thought and experience. I had concluded, from a word dropped here and there, that he was at heart a believer in the Faith of Christendom, but in order to silence the lingering doubt I still entertained on that point, I put to him the following questions, and attentively noted the substance of his somewhat curious responses thereto.
“1st. Question. ‘You, Monsieur Ravalette, have doubtless travelled much, and seen a great deal of this world of ours?’
“Here he interrupted me by saying, ‘And several others beside!’ I asked for an explanation, but he merely waved his hand and motioned me to go on. I did so. ‘Let me ask you if the result of your observations abroad, amongst men of different nations and faith-complexions, has not been a strengthening of your belief in the Mosaic teachings, generally, and in what is popularly known as Christianity?’