nowise to blame, suffer for the perturbation of his uneasy nature (or spirit).  He practised the studied absurdity of Tertullian and emulated the exaltation of St. Paul.  His lectures on philosophy were an absolute travesty, as his contempt for philosophy was made apparent in every sentence; and M. Gosselin, who set great value upon the divinity of the schools, quietly endeavoured to counteract his teaching.  But fanaticism does not always prevent people from being clear-sighted.  M. Gottofrey noticed something peculiar about me, and he detected that which had escaped the paternal optimism of M. Gosselin.  He stirred my conscience to its very depths, as I shall presently explain, and with an unrelenting hand tore asunder all the bandages with which I had disguised even from myself the wounds of a faith already severely stricken.

M. Pinault was very much like M. Littre in respect to his concentrated passion and the originality of his ways.  If M. Littre had received a Catholic education, he would have gone to the extreme of mysticism; if M. Pinault had not received a Catholic education he would have been a revolutionist and positivist.  Men of their stamp always go to one extreme or another.  The very physiognomy of M. Pinault arrested attention.  Eaten up by rheumatism, he seemed to embody in his person all the ways in which a body may be contorted from its proper shape.  Ugly as he was, there was a marked expression of vigour about his face; but in direct contrast to M. Gosselin, he was deplorably lacking in cleanliness.  While he was lecturing he would use his old cloak and the sleeves of his cassock as if it were a duster to wipe up anything; and his skull-cap, lined with cotton wool to protect him from neuralgia, formed a very ugly border round his head.  With all that he was full of passion and eloquence, somewhat sarcastic at times, but witty and incisive.  He had little literary culture, but he often came out with some unexpected sally.  You could feel that his was a powerful individuality which faith kept under due control, but which ecclesiastical discipline had not crushed.  He was a saint, but had very little of the priest and nothing of the Sulpician about him.  He did violence to the prime rule of the Company, which is to renounce anything approaching talent and originality, and to be pliant to the discipline which enjoys a general mediocrity.

M. Pinault had at first been professor of mathematics in the university.  In associating himself with studies which, in our view, are incompatible with faith in the supernatural and fervent catholicism, he did no more than M. Cauchy, who was at once a mathematician of the first order and a more fervent believer than many members of the Academy of Sciences who are noted for their piety.  Christianity is alleged to be a supernatural historical fact.  The historical sciences can be made to show—­and to my mind, beyond the possibility of contradiction—­that it is not a supernatural fact, and that there never