“To this, to this,” he cried, “oh people of Paris, we all must come!  Our ambitions, our hopes, our dreams, our grand reforms, our loves and joys end here, so far as this world is concerned!  He whom we have just laid in the earth was skilled in many devious ways of learning,—­gifted with eloquence, great in scholarship, quick with the tongue as with the pen, he was a man whom perchance all France would have called famous had it not been for me!  I am the blot on my father’s name!  I am the sin for which he has made the last expiation!  People of Paris, for years he lived and worked among you,—­outwardly smiling, witty of speech and popular with you all,—­ but inwardly a misery to himself in his own conscience, because he knew his life was not what he professed it to be.  He knew that he did not believe what he asked you to accept as true.  He knew that he had guilt upon his soul,—­he knew that all the sins which none of you could guess at, God saw.  For there is a God!  Not the God of the priests, but the God of the Universe and of man’s natural and spiritual instinct.  He from whom nothing escapes,—­He who ordains where every drop of dew shall fall,—­He whose omnipresent vision perceives the flight of every small bird in the air and predetermines the building of its nest, and the manner of its end,—­ He is the God whom none can deceive.  Those who dream they can play false with Him are mistaken.  This dead man, my father, living among you for years, was contented for years to seem like you,—­yes!—­for you all have something which you think you can cover up from the searching eye of Fate; and many of you pretend to be what you are not,—­while many more wear the aspect of men over the souls of beasts.  My father who rests here to-day at our feet, was a priest of the Roman Church.  In that capacity he should have been clothed with sanctity.  Human, yet removed from common frailty.  Yet reckless of his order, heedless of his vows, he, priest as he was, turned libertine, and betrayed an innocent woman.  He destroyed her name—­ killed her honour—­broke her heart!  Libertines of all classes from kings to commoners, do this kind of thing every day, and deem it but a small fault of character.  Nevertheless it is a crime!—­and for a crime there is always punishment!  For everything that is false,—­for everything that is mean,—­for everything that is contemptible and cowardly, punishment comes,—­if not soon, then late.  In this case vengeance was forestalled,—­for the sinner, repenting in time, took his vengeance on himself.  He confessed his sin before you all!  That was brave!  How many of you here to-day would have such courage!  How many of you would throw off your cloaks of virtue and admit your vices?—­or having admitted them, try to amend them?  But this is what my father did.  And for this he should be honoured!  He told you all fully and frankly that his professions of faith were false and vain and conventional; and that he had seemed to you what