“To penetrate the Divine mind and its motives for not intervening is impossible for us–––”
“That is priest’s prattle! Also, I care nothing now about Divine motives. Motives are human, not divine. So is policy. That is why the present Pope is unworthy of respect. He let his flock die. He deserted his Cardinal. He let the hun go unrebuked. He betrayed Christ. I care nothing about any mind weak enough, politic enough, powerless enough, to ignore love for motives!
“One loves, or one does not love. Loving is giving––” The girl sat up in the sleigh and the thickening snowflakes drove into her flushed face. “Loving is giving,” she repeated, “––giving life to love; giving up life for love––giving! giving! always giving!––always forgiving! That is love! That is the only God!––the indestructible, divine God within each one of us!”
Brisson appraised her with keen and scholarly eyes. “Yet,” he said pleasantly, “you do not forgive God for the death of your friend. Don’t you practise your faith?”
The girl seemed nonplussed; then a brighter tint stained her cheeks under the ragged sheepskin cap.
“Forgive God!” she cried. “If there really existed that sort of God, what would be the use of forgiving what He does? He’d only do it again. That is His record!” she added fiercely, “––indifference to human agony, utter silence amid lamentations, stone deaf, stone dumb, motionless. It is not in me to fawn and lick the feet of such an image. No! It is not in me to believe it alive, either. And I do not! But I know that love lives: and if there be any gods at all, it must be that they are without number, and that their substance is of that immortality born inside us, and which we call love! Otherwise, to me, now, symbols, signs, saints, rituals, vows––these things, in my mind, are all scrapped together as junk. Only, in me, the warm faith remains––that within me there lives a god of sorts––perhaps that immortal essence called a soul––and that its only name is love. And it has given us only one law to live by––the Law of Love!”
Brisson’s cigar had gone out. He examined it attentively 15 and found it would be worth relighting when opportunity offered.
Then he smiled amiably at Palla Dumont:
“What you say is very interesting,” he remarked. But he was too polite to add that it had been equally interesting to numberless generations through the many, many centuries during which it all had been said before, in various ways and by many, many people.