"Don't they rise up before you in dreams at times?" Raphael persisted.

"There's a statute of limitations," said the murderer-Croesus.

"And on his tombstone," Emile began, with a sardonic laugh, "the
stonemason will carve 'Passer-by, accord a tear, in memory of one
that's here!' Oh," he continued, "I would cheerfully pay a hundred
sous to any mathematician who would prove the existence of hell to me
by an algebraical equation."

He flung up a coin and cried:

"Heads for the existence of God!"

"Don't look!" Raphael cried, pouncing upon it. "Who knows? Suspense is
so pleasant."

"Unluckily," Emile said, with burlesque melancholy, "I can see no
halting-place between the unbeliever's arithmetic and the papal _Pater
noster_. Pshaw! let us drink. _Trinq_ was, I believe, the oracular answer
of the _dive bouteille_ and the final conclusion of Pantagruel."

"We owe our arts and monuments to the _Pater noster_, and our knowledge,
too, perhaps; and a still greater benefit--modern government--whereby
a vast and teeming society is wondrously represented by some five
hundred intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play
to _Civilization_, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient
terrible figure of the _King_, that sham Providence, reared by man
between himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism
seems like a barren skeleton. What do you say?"