"Woe to any mother who could give such advice!" cried May, in great excitement. She spoke of some of the strongest proofs of the Divine origin of the Bible, and asked the Baron if he could explain why it was that Christian nations were the most elevated, those without the light of revelation being the degraded ones.
"Oh!" said he, "such a view has something beautiful in it; but it is only a delusion, a transition period in the history and development of mind, I might say, the Raupenkleid—chrysalis—of education, out of which the splendid and brilliant butterfly of free thought breaks forth, and Science unfolds her golden wings, and in her commanding presence, the old orthodox Bible-faith can never again lift its head.
"There is an endless primeval matter, I may say the Urkraft—first cause—of all things, which is scattered in countless atoms in eternal space.
"From this primeval matter, during the course of millions on millions of ages, slowly and gradually unfolded beings, from the most insignificant to the highest. From a scrap of mud, through the effect of light and heat, perhaps by contact with some other body, a frog was produced. Nearest related to the frog stands the Labyrinthodonten, whose hand-like foot-tracks have been found in the sandstone, and which is decidedly the transition between these animals and the higher species of the ape; and from the ape, during impossible-to-comprehend ages, man has sprung, at first rough and animal, as we see to-day in savage races, from step to step unfolding and rising, till we have the Mensch of our present civilization and refinement."
All this was said with a foppish, self-satisfied air, as if he were a personification of wisdom. May looked at him in amazement, wondering at his shallowness.
At length she said, "Concerning origin and ancestors I will not now dispute. If you deny the Bible, we have no common ground of argument; and if your argument be true, we have after this life—nothing. Let proud Science beware lest she scorch her 'golden wings' in the avenging fire of Divine wrath.
"If you are content with the doctrine of man's descent from an ape, originally, according to your own argument, from a frog! I deny its truth, and claim mine from an eternal, omnipotent and holy Creator, and personal Father, not simply an eviges Sein—eternal state of being—but something infinitely and incomprehensibly more exalted."
Here the conversation was interrupted by the approach of the Baronin, accompanied by a tall noble-looking lady attired in black.
May started, for it was the lady in the photo of the lost sketch-book. Her friend introduced the stranger as the Countess von Omnesky, a lady of Russian birth, but who had been partly educated in England, her father having long filled an official position there under the Russian Government.
The Countess was still young, only five-and-twenty, of a pale, melancholy, but highly intelligent countenance, and her sapphire blue eyes had a mournful, far-away look in them, that touched one deeply.