theologian to lead you back by discussing texts and dogmas; but in the
name of Charity, my child, yes, in the name of Charity alone, reflect and
take up your task of consolation and hope once more."

Pierre had sat down beside Abbe Rose, in that deserted nook, at the very
foot of the basilica. "Charity! charity!" he replied in passionate
accents; "why, it is its nothingness and bankruptcy that have killed the
priest there was in me. How can you believe that benevolence is
sufficient, when you have spent your whole life in practising it without
any other result than that of seeing want perpetuated and even increased,
and without any possibility of naming the day when such abomination shall
cease? . . . You think of the reward after death, do you not? The justice
that is to reign in heaven? But that is not justice, it is dupery--dupery
that has brought the world nothing but suffering for centuries past."

Then he reminded the old priest of their life in the Charonne district,
when they had gone about together succouring children in the streets and
parents in their hovels; the whole of those admirable efforts which, so
far as Abbe Rose was concerned, had simply ended in blame from his
superiors, and removal from proximity to his poor, under penalty of more
severe punishment should he persist in compromising religion by the
practice of blind benevolence without reason or object. And now, was he
not, so to say, submerged beneath the ever-rising tide of want, aware
that he would never, never be able to give enough even should he dispose
of millions, and that he could only prolong the agony of the poor, who,
even should they eat today, would starve again on the morrow? Thus he was
powerless. The wound which he tried to dress and heal, immediately
reopened and spread, in such wise that all society would at last be
stricken and carried off by it.