Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (5/12) (2/2)

In anger at himself he sprang to his feet. On the table before him was a heap of the manufactures of rationalist, of sophist, and of sage. Every one of those who have taken the nimbus from a god and pointed to an eternal grave had left a textbook there. For some time they had been accumulating on back bookshelves; but the day before, with some sermon in view, he had got them within reach. It is good to be valiant in the pulpit, it is good to confute; and the privilege of demolishing any doctrine that conflicts with Christianity, particularly when there is not the slightest danger of being answered back, is a pleasure in itself. But each time Gonfallon had handled a materialist, zest in his own creed declined. An Englishman, Clifford, who described the universe as an immense Sir Roger de Coverley, in which the dancers were atoms and the ballroom space, had the power to take him into an abyss so dank that the candle of faith was snuffed. A Frenchman, Flavet, had shown him the provenance of the parables. In Assyro-Accadian myth, Schrader, a German, had displayed to him the fabric of the Pentateuch.

An idle task, Voltaire has said, an idle task it is, this pulling down of enchanted castles. It is better far to examine truths than lies. But where are the truths? Gonfallon had asked himself the same thing not once, but many times. As yet no answer had been vouchsafed.

And now, in anger at himself, in an effort to banish Claire, he picked up the book that lay nearest to his hand. “Comprends,” it shouted at him, “comprends que tu portes ton paradis et ton enfer en toi-même.”

“Perhaps,” he muttered.

He put the book down and took another. It happened to be one of Renan’s melodious fumisteries; and as he opened it a phrase jumped out and stabbed him in the eyes: “La vertu est une suprême illusion.”

“Perhaps,” he repeated.

A third volume, a summary of German metaphysics, lay within reach. “The heavens are void,” it insisted. “There has been nothing, there is nothing, there will be nothing, save a constant evolution, a continuous development, with death for a goal.”

“Nothing?”

He left the table and its blasphemies, and turned to the window. His anger had gone, his thoughts of Claire as well, and in their train seemed to have departed the strength⁠—or the weakness, was it?⁠—which had visited him the preceding night. Yet as he looked up into the taciturn sky, something must have rebelled within him; for he groaned to the stars, “O Chaos, take that Nothing back and give us Satan in its stead!”