Page:The Revolt of the Angels v2.djvu/319

 brought with him the pious Théophile, waxed indignant when he heard the musician praising the Lord, and rained down such blows on his head as would have felled an ox. But the head of a musician is harder than a bucranium, and the blows which Théophile received did not avail to modify that angel’s notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita’s pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.

“And you are surprised at that!” exclaimed young Maurice’s guardian angel. “I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then, Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the demiurge, if he had any brains!”

It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.