and your life."

"There is truth in what you say," replied Dorsenne, "but you are mistaken
if you think that the most intellectual men of our age have not suffered,
too, from that abuse of thought. What is to be done? Ah, it is the
disease of a century too cultivated, and there is no cure."

"There is one," interrupted Montfanon, "which you do not wish to see....
You will not deny that Balzac was the boldest of our modern writers. Is
it necessary for me, an ignorant man, to recite to you the phrase which
governs his work: 'Thought, principle of evil and of good can only be
prepared, subdued, directed by religion.' See?" he continued, suddenly
taking his companion by the arm and forcing him to look into a
transversal allee through the copse, "there he is, the doctor who holds
the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others. Do not
show yourself. They will have forgotten our presence. But, look, look!
....Ah, what a meeting!"

The personage who appeared suddenly in that melancholy, deserted garden,
and in a manner almost supernatural, so much did his presence form a
living commentary to the discourse of the impassioned nobleman, was no
other than the Holy Father himself, on the point of entering his carriage
for his usual drive. Dorsenne, who only knew Leo XIII from his
portraits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cassock gleamed
beneath the red mantle, and who leaned on one side upon a prelate of his
court, on the other upon one of his officers. In drawing back, as
Montfanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand upon the
keepers, he could study at his leisure the delicate face of the Sovereign
Pontiff, who paused at a bed of roses to converse familiarly with a
kneeling gardener. He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of that