The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.  Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold.  He would take the altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices which he could easily break with his fingers.  He would hang his bridal-bed with the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would give his wife for jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that hung from the necks of the Virgin and the saints.  The church itself, if another storey were added to it, would supply them with a palace.  God would have no objection to make since He had allowed them to love each other.  And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people kissing his golden miracle-working feet?

Abbe Mouret rose.  He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat’s, that wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.

‘There is nothing, nothing, nothing!’ he said.  ‘God does not exist.’

A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church.  The terrified priest turned deadly pale and listened.  Who had spoken?  Who was it that had blasphemed?  Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure he had felt upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage:  sharp talons seemed to be rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood streaming forth.  Yet he remained on his feet, struggling against the sudden attack.  He cursed and reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered and grinned round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One battered at them.  Why had he not been on his guard against Satan’s wiles?  Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the very vitals of his victim?

His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere child.  Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin crouching victoriously on his breast?  This time he had actually denied his God.  It was all one fatal descent.  His transgression had destroyed his faith, and then dogma had tottered.  One single doubt of the flesh, pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away.  The divine ordinances irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile.  Then came other temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty, an irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness, sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride.  And then God was robbed.  His vessels were broken to adorn woman’s impurity.  Ah! well, then, he was damned.  Nothing could make any difference to him now.  Sin might speak aloud.  It was useless to struggle further.  The monsters who had hovered about his neck were battening on his vitals now.  He yielded to them with hideous satisfaction.  He shook his fists at the church.  No; he believed no longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy Trinity; he believed in naught