After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:--

"The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person,
person would be without limit; it would not be infinite;
in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an _I_.
That _I_ of the infinite is God."

The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice,
and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one.
When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him.
It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the
few hours which had been left to him. That which he had said
brought him nearer to him who is in death. The supreme moment
was approaching.

The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that
he had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to
extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled,
aged and ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.

"This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would
be regrettable if we had met in vain?"

The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled
with gloom was imprinted on his countenance.

"Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more
from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength,
"I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation.