metal had weakened my mind to such an extent that I had become almost
besotted, and I fancied that until then my judgment had been insane. The
result was that, in my newly acquired wisdom, I took the resolution of
leading a totally different sort of life in future. De la Haye would
often cry for joy when he saw me shedding tears caused by the contrition
which he had had the wonderful cleverness to sow in my poor sickly soul.
He would talk to me of paradise and the other world, just as if he had
visited them in person, and I never laughed at him! He had accustomed me
to renounce my reason; now to renounce that divine faculty a man must no
longer be conscious of its value, he must have become an idiot. The
reader may judge of the state to which I was reduced by the following
specimen. One day, De la Haye said to me:

"It is not known whether God created the world during the vernal equinox
or during the autumnal one."

"Creation being granted," I replied, in spite of the mercury, "such a
question is childish, for the seasons are relative, and differ in the
different quarters of the globe."

De la Haye reproached me with the heathenism of my ideas, told me that I
must abandon such impious reasonings.... and I gave way!

That man had been a Jesuit. He not only, however, refused to admit it,
but he would not even suffer anyone to mention it to him. This is how he
completed his work of seduction by telling me the history of his life.

"After I had been educated in a good school," he said, "and had devoted
myself with some success to the arts and sciences, I was for twenty years
employed at the University of Paris. Afterwards I served as an engineer