"V. Vidil.
"P.S.—You will find in a fold of this letter a thousand francs wherewith to buy a substitute."
Geneviève was dead—had died of despondency, perhaps because he had not spoken that which would have given her an object for which to live. From that day no smile ever brightened up his features. He returned to Issarlès. The Vidils had done well, and had amassed a little money.
Twenty years passed. In 1879 M. Firmin Boissin, who had been at college at Aubenas with Noirot, went to Issarlès to visit his friend there, the Curé Téraube; and when there learned that his old schoolfellow lived near, but in strange fashion—solitary, speaking to few, spending his time in study and in contemplation, still wrapped in philosophic pursuits. He had brought away with him from Nîmes some of the doctrinal books that had belonged to his ancestors, but which père Noirot had not read. All his spare cash was expended in the purchase of others.
M. Boissin visited him. Noirot's first words were: "Explain to me, if you can, the contradiction that exists between the foreknowledge of God and free-will in man. How can man be a free agent when his course, his every act is irrevocably predestined?"
The iron of Calvinism had entered into his soul, and was festering it.
M. Boissin and he had many disputes on this perplexing theme. Pierre was ever revolving the question in his mind fruitlessly, making no further progress than does a squirrel in its rotating cage. At last, one day, he exclaimed bitterly, "How well I can understand the saying of Ackermann, 'I have lost all faith—I believe now in nothing but in the existence of evil.' And the evil is the Great Cause—is God."
A few days later Pierre disappeared. Mme. Vidil came in alarm to the presbytère to inform the Curé that she could not find her foster-son, and that she fancied he had fallen into the lake. The alarm was given, the whole village turned out, and he was discovered in the water. The Curé managed to drag him out by the hair of his head. Pierre Noirot was conveyed to his bed. Life was not quite extinct. The Abbé Téraube, stooping over him, said, "Monsieur Noirot, do you recognise me?" The dying man made a sign in the affirmative. "Do you commit yourself into the hands of God, and put your trust in the infinite mercy of Christ?"
At these words the eyes of Noirot opened; he looked up and said in a whisper: "Je vois—je sais—je crois—je suis désabusé."