“The action of the Paraclete,” the astrologer struck in, “will extend to the principle of generation.  The divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the Holy Bible says.  This was the doctrine of the prophet Vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages.  The doctrine has been continued and amplified, since Vintras’s death, by his successor, Dr. Johannes.”

“Then there is to be Paradise on earth,” said Des Hermies.

“Yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love.”

“You’ve got me all mixed up,” said Durtal.  “Now you announce the arrival of the Holy Ghost, now the glorious advent of Christ.  Are these kingdoms identical or is one to follow the other?”

“There is a distinction,” answered Gevingey, “between the coming of the Paraclete and the victorious return of Christ.  They occur in the order named.  First a society must be recreated, embraced by the third Hypostasis, by Love, in order that Jesus may descend, as He has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in His image.”

“What role is the Pope to play?”

“Ah, that is one of the most curious points of the Johannite doctrine.  Time, since the first appearance of the Messiah, is divided, as you know, into two periods, the period of the Victim, of the expiant Saviour, the period in which we now are, and the other, that which we await, the period of Christ bathed in the spittle of mockery but radiant with the superadorable splendour of His person.  Well, there is a different pope for each of these eras.  The Scriptures announce these two sovereign pontificates—­and so do my horoscopes, for that matter.

“It is an axiom of theology that the spirit of Peter lives in his successors.  It will live in them, more or less hidden, until the longed-for expansion of the Holy Ghost.  Then John, who has been held in reserve, as the Gospel says, will begin his ministry of love and will live in the souls of the new popes.”

“I don’t understand the utility of a pope when Jesus is to be visible,” said Des Hermies.

“To tell the truth, there is no use in having one, and the papacy is to exist only during the epoch reserved for the effluence of the divine Paraclete.  The day on which, in a shower of meteors, Jesus appears, the pontificate of Rome ceases.”

“Without going more deeply into questions which we could discuss the rest of our lives,” said Durtal, “I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible.  There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile.  Just look around you and see.  Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities.  Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance.  And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that?  No, man has never changed.  His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present.  Only the form of his sins varies.  Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.”