"
"True, 'as the fool thinks.' The proverb is somewhat stale. I marvel
thou findest not its application to thine own bias, perdie!"
"At any rate, if I am fooled, I am none the worse for my belief, if my
creed be not true; but if man, as thou wouldest fain hope, is like the
beasts that perish, I am still at quits with thee. And if this dream of
thine should prove but a dream, and thou shouldest awake--to the horrors
of the pit, and the torments of the worm that dieth not!"
"Peace, thou croaker! I did not send for thee to prophesy, but to prove;
I would break a lance and hold a tilt at thine argument. Now, I have a
weapon in reserve which shall break down thy defences--the web of thy
reasoning shall vanish. The fear of punishment, and the hope of future
reward, held out as a bait to the cowardly and the selfish, shall be of
no avail when the object of my research is accomplished. Hast thou not
heard of the supreme elixir--the pabulum of life, which, if a man find,
he may renew his years, and bid defiance alike to time and the
destroyer? Then what will become of thy boasted system of opinions,
begotten by priesthood and nurtured by folly?"
"And this phantasma, which man has never seen; which exists not upon the
least shadow of evidence--which has not even the lowest dictates of
sense and plausibility in its favour--on this _Ignis fatuus_, eluding
the grasp, and for ever mocking the folly of its pursuers, thou canst
build thine hopes, because it flatters thy wishes and thy fears?"
"My fears!" said the Baron, rising: "and who speaks of my _fears_? I
would chastise thee, thou insolent priest, wert thou not protected by
the laws of courtesy.
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