“All the more reason,” Carhaix rejoined, “why society—­if it is as you have described it—­should fall to pieces.  I, too, think it is putrefied, its bones ulcerated, its flesh dropping off.  It can neither be poulticed nor cured, it must be interred and a new one born.  And who but God can accomplish such a miracle?”

“If we admit,” said Des Hermies, “that the infamousness of the times is transitory, it is self-evident that only the intervention of a God can wash it away; for neither socialism nor any other chimera of the ignorant and hate-filled workers will modify human nature and reform the peoples.  These tasks are above human forces.”

“And the time awaited by Johannes is at hand,” Gevingey proclaimed.  “Here are some of the manifest proofs.  Raymond Lully asserted that the end of the old world would be announced by the diffusion of the doctrines of Antichrist.  He defined these doctrines.  They are materialism and the monstrous revival of magic.  This prediction applies to our age, I think.  On the other hand, the good tidings was to be realized, according to Our Lord, as reported by Saint Matthew, ’When ye shall see the abomination of desolation ... stand in the holy place.’  And isn’t it standing in the holy place now?  Look at our timorous, skeptical Pope, lukewarm and politic, our episcopate of simonists and cowards, our flabby, indulgent clergy.  See how they are ravaged by Satanism, then tell me if the Church can fall any lower.”

“The promises are explicit and cannot fail,” and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and his eyes to heaven, the bell-ringer murmured, “Our father—­thy kingdom come!”

“It’s getting late,” said Des Hermies, “time we were going.”

While they were putting on their coats, Carhaix questioned Durtal.  “What do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of Christ?”

“I hope for nothing at all.”

“I pity you.  Really, you believe in no future amelioration?”

“I believe, alas, that a dotard Heaven maunders over an exhausted Earth.”

The bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head.

When they had left Gevingey, Des Hermies, after walking in silence for some time, said, “You are not astonished that all the events spoken of tonight happened at Lyons.”  And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, he continued, “You see I am well acquainted with Lyons.  People’s brains there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from the Rhone.  That city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of modern cities.  But Lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds.  That’s where Vintras died, the one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet Elijah was incarnate.  That’s where Naundorff found his last partisans.  That is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotiere you can have a person bewitched for a louis.  Add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive of bourgeois bigotry.