They have sworn to renounce love. They have spat in thy face, fruitful,
creative Divinity, they have denied thee on their impure altars.

But it is their God who is evil, as Proudhon said, that senseless and
ludicrous God who delights in grotesque saturnalia, in ridiculous prayers,
in shameful mummeries, in vows contrary to nature.

Marcel felt himself transformed.

A new feeling was born in him and plunged him into ineffable delight.

Nevertheless, as I have said, he experienced a vague fear; he had had a
glimpse of the unknown, and he was one of those delicate and timid souls
with their thoughts in some way turned upon themselves, which are terrified
at the unknown.

Seized with a restless apprehension and with a mysterious trouble, he felt
the hour coming which was about to change his life.




XXVI.


OF YOUNG GIRLS IN GENERAL.

"You tell me, Madame, that this description
is neither in the taste of Ovid