spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom and
philosophy, poured through the kind distortion of his own intelligence.

He gave a toss of his head. "Ah, that is my hobby--I reconcile, I unite,
I adapt! It is all the nature of the mind, the far-look, the all-round
sight of the man. I have it all. I see."

He gazed eloquently into the sunset, he swept the horizon with his hand.
"I have the all-round look. I say the Man of Calvary, He is before all,
the sun; but I say Socrates, Plato, Jean Jacques--that is my name, and it
is not for nothing, that--Jean Jacques Rousseau, Descartes, Locke, they
are stars that go round the sun. It is the same light, but not the same
sound. I reconcile. In me all comes together like the spokes to the hub
of a wheel. Me--I am a Christian, I am philosophe, also. In St.
Saviour's, my home in Quebec, if the crops are good, what do men say?
'C'est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,' that is what they say. If the
crops are bad, what do they say? 'It is the good God'--that is what they
say. It is the good God that makes crops good or bad, and it is the good
God that makes men say, 'C'est le bon Dieu.' The good God makes the
philosophy. It is all one."

She appeared to grow agitated, and her voice shook as she spoke. "Tsh,
it is only a fool that says the good God does it, when the thing that is
done breaks you or that which you love all to pieces. No, no, no, it is
not religion, it is not philosophy that makes one raise the head when the
heart is bowed down, when everything is snatched away that was all in
all. That the good God does it is a lie. Santa Maria, what a lie!"

"Why 'Santa Maria,' then, if it is a lie?" he asked triumphantly. He
did not observe how her breast was heaving, how her hands were clenched;