Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/63

Rh brain. On one occasion, when we were endeavouring to enlighten our minds on the Greek question, as it had presented itself to a naval officer whose vessel had been stationed in Greek and Adriatic waters during our occupation of Corfu and the other Ionian Isles, we could only elicit from our informant the fact that one morning before breakfast he had hanged seventeen priests."

The second passage which I store in these notes for future use, is the supremely magnificent one, out of a book full of magnificence,—if truth be counted as having in it the strength of deed: Alphonse Karr's "Grains de Bon Sens." I cannot praise either this or his more recent "Bourdonnements" to my own heart's content, simply because they are by a man utterly after my own heart, who has been saying in France, this many a year, what I also, this many a year, have been saying in England, neither of us knowing of the other, and both of us vainly. (See pages 11 and 12 of "Bourdonnements.") The passage here given is the sixty-third clause in "Grains de Bon Sens."

"Et tout cela, monsieur, vient de ce qu'il n'y a plus de croyances—de ce qu'on ne croit plus à rien.

"Ah! saperlipopette, monsieur, vous me la baillez belle! Vous dites qu'on ne croit plus à rien ! Mais jamais, à aucune époque, on n'a cru a tant de billevesées, de bourdes, de mensonges, de sottises, d'absurdités qu'au-jourd'hui.

"D'abord, on croit à l'incredulite—l'incredulite est une croyance, une religion très exigeante, qui a ses dogmes, sa liturgie, ses pratiques, ses rites! . . . son intolérance, ses superstitions. Nous avons des incredules et des impies jésuites, et des incrédules et des impies jansenistes; des impies molinistes, et des impies quiétistes; des impies pratiquants, et non pratiquants; des impies indifferénts et