“No, my dear Celeste,” replied Felix.

“Oh! to have broken his word!” she cried, softly.

“But to have kept it would have been a profanation,” said Felix.  “I love you so deeply, with a tenderness so little proof against your wishes, that I promised a thing contrary to my conscience.  Conscience, Celeste, is our treasure, our strength, our mainstay.  How can you ask me to go into a church and kneel at the feet of a priest, in whom I can see only a man?  You would despise me if I obeyed you.”

“And so, my dear Felix, you refuse to go to church,” said Celeste, casting a tearful glance at the man she loved.  “If I were your wife you would let me go alone?  You do not love me as I love you! for, alas!  I have a feeling in my heart for an atheist contrary to that which God commands.”

“An atheist!” cried Felix.  “Oh, no!  Listen to me, Celeste.  There is certainly a God; I believe in that; but I have higher ideas of Him than those of your priests; I do not wish to bring Him down to my level; I want to rise to Him.  I listen to the voice He has put within me,—­a voice which honest men call conscience, and I strive not to darken that divine ray as it comes to me.  For instance, I will never harm others; I will do nothing against the commandments of universal morality, which was that of Confucius, Moses, Pythagoras, Socrates, as well as of Jesus Christ.  I will stand in the presence of God; my actions shall be my prayers; I will never be false in word or deed; never will I do a base or shameful thing.  Those are the precepts I have learned from my virtuous father, and which I desire to bequeath to my children.  All the good that I can do I shall try to accomplish, even if I have to suffer for it.  What can you ask more of a man than that?”

This profession of the Phellion faith caused Celeste to sadly shake her head.

“Read attentively,” she replied, “‘The Imitation of Jesus Christ.’  Strive to convert yourself to the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman Church, and you will see how empty your words are.  Hear me, Felix; marriage is not, the Church says, the affair of a day, the mere satisfaction of our own desires; it is made for eternity.  What! shall we be united day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet have two languages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of perpetual dissension?  Would you condemn me to weep tears over the state of your soul,—­tears that I must ever conceal from you?  Could I address myself in peace to God when I see his arm stretched out in wrath against you?  Must my children inherit the blood of a deist and his convictions?  Oh!  God, what misery for a wife!  No, no, these ideas are intolerable.  Felix! be of my faith, for I cannot share yours.  Do not put a gulf between us.  If you loved me, you would already have read ’The Imitation of Jesus Christ.’”

The Phellion class, sons of the “Constitutionnel,” dislike the priestly mind.  Felix had the imprudence to reply to this sort of prayer from the depths of an ardent heart:—­