Crisostomo looked a moment at the man who was speaking to him in this manner. He noticed that his muscular arms were covered with bruises and black and blue spots. "Do you also believe in the miracle version of the affair?" he said, smiling--"this miracle of which the people speak?" "If I believed in miracles, I would not believe in God. I would believe in a deified man. In fact, I would believe that man had created God after his image and likeness," he replied solemnly. "But I believe in Him. More than once I have felt His hand. When all was falling headlong, threatening destruction for everything which was in the place, I Held the criminal. I put myself by his side. He was struck and I am safe and sound." "You? So that you...?" "Yes! I held him when he wanted to escape, once he had begun his fatal work. I saw his crime. I say: 'Let God be the only judge among men. Let Him be the only one who has the right to take away life. Let man never think of substituting himself for him!'" "And, still you this time...." "No!" interrupted Elias, foreseeing the objection that he was going to raise. "It is not the same thing. When a man as judge condemns another to death or destroys his future forever, he does it with impunity and makes use of the force of other men to carry out his sentence. Yet, after all, the sentence may be wrong and unjust. But I, in exposing the criminal to the same danger which he had prepared for others, ran the same risks. I did not kill him. I allowed the hand of God to kill him." "Do you not believe in chance?" "To believe in chance is like believing in miracles. Both theories suppose that God does not know the future. What is a casualty? A happening which absolutely nobody knows beforehand. What is a miracle? A contradiction, a contortion of the laws of nature. Lack of foresight and contradiction in the All Knowing, who directs the machinery of the world, are two great imperfections." "Who are you?" Ibarra asked again, with a certain dread. "Have you studied?" "I have had to believe in God a great deal because I have lost my faith in men," replied the pilot, evading the question. Ibarra thought that he understood this man; young and proscribed, he disregarded human justice; denied the right of man to judge his equals, he protested against power and superiority of certain classes of men over others. "But you must admit the necessity of human justice, however imperfect it may be," he replied. "God, although he has ministers on the earth, cannot, that is to say, cannot clearly give his judgment upon the millions of contentions which are stirred up by our passions. It is necessary, it is just, that a man should sometimes judge his fellows."