I understand why they want to believe in God, and consequently why they do believe in Him, since faith comes at will.

I remember, while I lean on this wall and listen, that one day in the past not far from here, a lowly woman raised her voice and said, “That woman does not believe in God!  It’s because she has no children, or else because they’ve never been ill.”

And I remember, too, without being able to picture them to myself, all the voices I have heard saying, “It would be too unjust, if there were no God!”

There is no other proof of God’s existence than the need we have of Him.  God is not God—­He is the name of all that we lack.  He is our dream, carried to the sky.  God is a prayer, He is not some one.

They put all His kind actions into the eternal future, they hide them in the unknown.  Their agonizing dues they drown in distances which outdistance them; they cancel His contradictions in inaccessible uncertainty.  No matter; they believe in the idol made of a word.

And I?  I have awaked out of religion, since it was a dream.  It had to be that one morning my eyes would end by opening and seeing nothing more of it.

I do not see God, but I see the church and I see the priests.  Another ceremony is unfolding just now, in another direction—­up at the castle, a Mass of St. Hubert.  Leaning on my elbows the spectacle absorbs me.

These ministers of the cult, blessing this pack of hounds, these guns and hunting knives, officiating in lace and pomp side by side with these wealthy people got up as warlike sportsmen, women and men alike, on the great steps of a castle and facing a crowd kept aloof by ropes,—­this spectacle defines, more glaringly than any words whatever can, the distance which separates the churches of to-day from Christ’s teaching, and points to all the gilded putridity which has accumulated on those pure defaced beginnings.  And what is here is everywhere; what is little is great.

The parsons, the powerful—­all always joined together.  Ah, certainty is rising to the heart of my conscience.  Religions destroy themselves spiritually because they are many.  They destroy whatever leans upon their fables.  But their directors, they who are the strength of the idol, impose it.  They decree authority; they hide the light.  They are men, defending their interests as men; they are rulers defending their sway.

It has to be!  You shall not know!  A terrible memory shudders through me; and I catch a confused glimpse of people who, for the needs of their common cause, uphold, with their promises and thunder, the mad unhappiness which lies heavy on the multitudes.

* * * * * *

Footsteps are climbing towards me.  Marie appears, dressed in gray.  She comes to look for me.  In the distance I saw that her cheeks were brightened and rejuvenated by the wind.  Close by I see that her eyelids are worn, like silk.  She finds me sunk in reflection.  She looks at me, like a frail and frightened mother; and this solicitude which she brings me is enough by itself to calm and comfort me.