made? And so he had long remained a gloomy vision, a spectre of damnation
prowling about the house, whereas now he became the house's very light,
clear and gay, a worker consumed by a longing for truth, who had never
desired anything but the love and happiness of all. For his part, Doctor
Chassaigne, a Pyrenean by birth, born in a far-off secluded village where
folks still believed in sorceresses, inclined rather towards religion,
although he had not set his foot inside a church during the forty years
he had been living in Paris. However, his conviction was absolute: if
there were a heaven somewhere, Michel Froment was assuredly there, and
not merely there, but seated upon a throne on the Divinity's right hand.

Then Pierre, in a few minutes, again lived through the frightful torment
which, during two long months, had ravaged him. It was not that he had
found controversial works of an anti-religious character in the bookcase,
or that his father, whose papers he sorted, had ever gone beyond his
technical studies as a /savant/. But little by little, despite himself,
the light of science dawned upon him, an /ensemble/ of proven phenomena,
which demolished dogmas and left within him nothing of the things which
as a priest he should have believed. It seemed, in fact, as though
illness had renewed him, as though he were again beginning to live and
learn amidst the physical pleasantness of convalescence, that still
subsisting weakness which lent penetrating lucidity to his brain. At the
seminary, by the advice of his masters, he had always kept the spirit of
inquiry, his thirst for knowledge, in check. Much of that which was
taught him there had surprised him; however, he had succeeded in making
the sacrifice of his mind required of his piety. But now, all the
laboriously raised scaffolding of dogmas was swept away in a revolt of
that sovereign mind which clamoured for its rights, and which he could no
longer silence. Truth was bubbling up and overflowing in such an
irresistible stream that he realised he would never succeed in lodging