Then he thought of God.  The sudden idea of divine help, of superhuman consolation, surprised him, as though it were something unforeseen and extraordinary.  The image of M. Venot was evoked thereby, and he saw his little plump face and ruined teeth.  Assuredly M. Venot, whom for months he had been avoiding and thereby rendering miserable, would be delighted were he to go and knock at his door and fall weeping into his arms.  In the old days God had been always so merciful toward him.  At the least sorrow, the slightest obstacle on the path of life, he had been wont to enter a church, where, kneeling down, he would humble his littleness in the presence of Omnipotence.  And he had been used to go forth thence, fortified by prayer, fully prepared to give up the good things of this world, possessed by the single yearning for eternal salvation.  But at present he only practiced by fits and starts, when the terror of hell came upon him.  All kinds of weak inclinations had overcome him, and the thought of Nana disturbed his devotions.  And now the thought of God astonished him.  Why had he not thought of God before, in the hour of that terrible agony when his feeble humanity was breaking up in ruin?

Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church.  But he had lost his bearings; the early hour had changed the face of the streets.  Soon, however, as he turned the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin, he noticed a tower looming vaguely in the fog at the end of the Trinite Church.  The white statues overlooking the bare garden seemed like so many chilly Venuses among the yellow foliage of a park.  Under the porch he stood and panted a little, for the ascent of the wide steps had tired him.  Then he went in.  The church was very cold, for its heating apparatus had been fireless since the previous evening, and its lofty, vaulted aisles were full of a fine damp vapor which had come filtering through the windows.  The aisles were deep in shadow; not a soul was in the church, and the only sound audible amid the unlovely darkness was that made by the old shoes of some verger or other who was dragging himself about in sulky semiwakefulness.  Muffat, however, after knocking forlornly against an untidy collection of chairs, sank on his knees with bursting heart and propped himself against the rails in front of a little chapel close by a font.  He clasped his hands and began searching within himself for suitable prayers, while his whole being yearned toward a transport.  But only his lips kept stammering empty words; his heart and brain were far away, and with them he returned to the outer world and began his long, unresting march through the streets, as though lashed forward by implacable necessity.  And he kept repeating, “O my God, come to my assistance!  O my God, abandon not Thy creature, who delivers himself up to Thy justice!  O my God, I adore Thee:  Thou wilt not leave me to perish under the buffetings of mine enemies!” Nothing