“Paris!” replied the boy in strangely sorrowful accents, turning his young, wistful face towards the Cardinal, his hair blown back in the light wind, “All Paris!”

“Ah!—­’tis a fine sight, all Paris!” said the old guide—­“one of the finest in the world, to judge by the outside of it.  But the inside is a very different matter; and if Paris is not a doomed city, then there is no God, and I know nothing of the Bible.  It has got all the old sins in a new shape, and revels in them.  And of the story of the priest, if you would hear it;—­ah!—­that is well!” he said, as Manuel left the giddy verge of the platform where he had been standing, and drew near.  “It is safer to be away from that edge, my child!  And for the poor priest, it happened in this way,—­it was a fair night, and the moon was high—­I was dozing off in a chair in my room below, when the bell rang quickly, yet softly.  I got up with pleasure, for I said to myself, ’here is an artist or a poet,—­one of those persons who are unlike anyone else’—­just as I am myself unlike anyone else—­’and so we two shall have a pleasant evening.’  But when I opened the door there was no one but a priest, and poor-looking even at that; and he was young and pale, and very uneasy in his manner, and he said to me, ’Jean Lapui’—­(that is my name)—­’let me pass up to the platform.’  ‘Willingly,’ said I, ’if I may go with you.’  ‘Nay, I would rather be alone,’ he answered.  ’That may not be,’ I told him, ’I am as pleased to see the moonbeams shining on the beasts and devils as any man,—­and I shall do you no harm by my company.’  Well, he agreed to have me then, and up we went the three hundred and seventy-eight steps,—­(it is a long way, Monseigneur;—­ )and he mounted quickly, I slowly,—­but always keeping my eye upon him.  At last we reached this platform, and the moonlight was beautiful, and clear as day.  Then my little priest sat down and began to laugh.  ‘Ha, my Lapui!’ he said, ’Is it not droll that this should be all a lie!  All this fine building, and all the other fine buildings of the kind in Paris!  Strange, my Lapui, is it not, that this Cathedral should be raised to the worship of a God whom no one obeys, or even thinks of obeying!  All show, my good Lapui!  All to feed priests like me, and keep them going—­but God has nothing to do with it—­nothing at all, I swear to you!’—­’You may be right, mon reverend,’ I said, (for I saw he was not in a mood to be argued with)—­“Yet truly the Cathedral has not always been a place of holiness.  In seventeen ninety-three there was not much of our Lord or the blessed Saints in it.’  ‘No, you are right, Lapui!’ he cried, ’Down came the statue of the Virgin, and up went the statue of Liberty!  There was the crimson flare of the Torch of Truth!—­and the effigies of the ape Voltaire and the sensualist Rousseau, took the places of St. Peter and St. Paul!  Ha!—­And they worshipped the goddess of Reason—­Reason, impersonated by Maillard the ballet-dancer!