“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary.  You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates.  You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church.  You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age.  It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law.  Law rests upon the social contract.  If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.”

“It’s no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master was silent.  “The place is covered with machine-guns.  We’ve got to obey our orders, and so have you.”

“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe.  I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled.  It is a pretty little point of theory.”

“Oh!  I dare say,” said Hutton.

Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.

“A cosy party,” resumed the Master, scornfully, “and yet I believe some of you are in doubt about how we all came together.  I will explain it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything.  To whom shall I specially address myself?  To Mr. James Turnbull.  He has a scientific mind.”

Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest.  The Master seemed only to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded:  “Mr. Turnbull will agree with me,” he said, “when I say that we long felt in scientific circles that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion.”

Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.

The Master went on smoothly:  “It was in vain for us to urge that the incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such executions.  We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand, to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all.”

MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull did not look up.

“This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,” continued the speaker; “it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done it with great success in the case of miracles and such things.  Now within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as Mr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a fictitious life—­the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to fight for the Virgin.”