were constituted as the crowd are taught to believe, there could be nothing on earth but wisdom and goodness; but the majority are fools or wicked, and the good are like tall trees, which the lightning blasts rather than the creeping weed.  Titianus falls before the dancer Theocritus, the noble Papinian before the murderer Caracalla, our splendid Alexander before such a wretch as Zminis; and divine reason lets it all happen, and allows human reason to proclaim the law.  Happiness is for fools and knaves; for those who cherish and uphold reason—­ay, reason, which is a part of the divinity—­persecution, misery, and despair.”

“Have done!” Melissa exclaimed.  “Have the judgments of the immortals not fallen hardly enough on us?  Would you provoke them to discharge their fury in some more dreadful manner?”

At this the skeptic struck his breast with defiant pride, exclaiming:  “I do not fear them, and dare to proclaim openly the conclusions of my thoughts.  There are no gods!  There is no rational guidance of the universe.  It has arisen self-evolved, by chance; and if a god created it, he laid down eternal laws and has left them to govern its course without mercy or grace, and without troubling himself about the puling of men who creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of a pumpkin.  And well for us that it should be so!  Better a thousand times is it to be the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious master who takes a malignant and envious pleasure in destroying the best!”

“And this, you say, is the final outcome of your thoughts?” asked Melissa, shaking her head sadly.  “Do you not perceive that such an outbreak of mad despair is simply unworthy of your own wisdom, of which the end and aim should be a passionless, calm, and immovable moderation?”

“And do they show such moderation,” Philip gasped out, “who pour the poison of misfortune in floods on one tortured heart?”

“Then you can accuse those whose existence you disbelieve in?” retorted Melissa with angry zeal.  “Is this your much-belauded logic?  What becomes of your dogmas, in the face of the first misfortune—­dogmas which enjoin a reserve of decisive judgment, that you may preserve your equanimity, and not overburden your soul, in addition to the misfortune itself, with the conviction that something monstrous has befallen you?  I remember how much that pleased me the first time I heard it.  For your own sake—­for the sake of us all—­cease this foolish raving, and do not merely call yourself a skeptic—­be one; control the passion that is rending you.  For love of me—­for love of us all—­”

And as she spoke she laid her hand on his shoulder, for he had sat down again; and although he pushed her away with some petulance, she went on in a tone of gentle entreaty:  “If we are not to be altogether too late in the field, let us consider the situation calmly.  I am but a girl, and this fresh disaster will fall more hardly on me than on you; for what would become of me without my father?”