has been such a thing as a supernatural fact.  We do not reject miracles upon the ground of a priori reasoning, but upon the ground of critical and historical reasoning, we have no difficulty in proving that miracles do not happen in the nineteenth century, and that the stones of miraculous events said to have taken place in our day are based upon imposture and credulity.  But the evidence in favour of the so-called miracles of the last three centuries, or even of those in the Middle Ages, is weaker still; and the same may be said of those dating from a still earlier period, for the further back one goes, the more difficult does it become to prove a supernatural fact.  In order thoroughly to understand this, you must have been accustomed to textual criticism and the historical method, and this is just what mathematics do not give.  Even in our own day, we have seen an eminent mathematician fall into blunders which the slightest knowledge of historical science would have enabled him to avoid.  M. Pinault’s religious belief was so keen that he was anxious to become a priest.  He was allowed to do very little in the way of theology, and he was at first attached to the science courses which in the programme of ecclesiastical studies are the necessary accompaniment of the two years of philosophy.  He would have been out of place at St. Sulpice with his lack of theological knowledge and the ardent mysticism of his imagination.  But at Issy, where he associated with very young men who had not studied the texts, he soon acquired considerable influence.  He was the leader of those who were full of ardent piety—­the “mystics,” as they are now called.  All of them treated him as their director, and they formed, as it were, a school apart, from which the profane were excluded, and which had its own important secrets.  A very powerful auxiliary of this party was the lay doorkeeper of the college, Pere Hanique, as we called him.  I always excite the wonder of the realists when I tell them that I have seen with my own eyes, a type which, owing to their scanty knowledge of human society, has never come beneath their notice, viz., the sublime conception of a hall-porter who has reached the most transcendent limits of speculation.  Hanique in his humble lodge was almost as great a man as M. Pinault.  Those who aimed at saintliness of life consulted him and looked up to him.  His simplicity of mind was contrasted with the savant’s coldness of soul, and he was adduced as an instance that the gifts of God are absolutely free.  All this created a deep division of feeling in the college.  The mystics worked themselves up to such a pitch of mental tension that several of them died, but this only increased the frenzy of the others.  M. Gosselin had too much tact to offer them a direct opposition, but for all that, there were two distinct parties in the college, the mystics acting under the immediate guidance of M. Pinault and Pere Hanique, while the “good fellows” (as we modestly entitled ourselves)