"Stuff and nonsensical rubbish!" said the Baron. "Under leave of my Lady Queen,—lad, thou hast lost thy senses. No such thing as matter, quotha! Why, there is nothing but matter that is in reality. What men call the soul is simply the brain. Give over thy fanciful stuff!" "You are a Realist, Messire?" asked Guy. "Call me what name you will, Sir Count," returned the Baron. "I am no such fool as yon lanky lad of mine. I believe what I see and hear, and there I begin and end. So does every wise man." "Is it not a little odd," inquired Guy, "that everybody should think all the wise men must believe as he does?" "Odd? No!" said the Baron. "Don’t you think so yourself, Sir Count?" Guy laughed. "But there is one thing I should like to know," said he. "I have heard much of Realists and Nominalists, but I never before met one of either. I wish to ask each of you, Messires,—In your system, what becomes of the soul after death?" "Nay, if there be no soul, what can become of it?" put in Damoiselle Melisende. "Pure foy!" cried the Baron. "I concern myself about nothing of that sort. Holy Church teaches that the soul survives the body, and it were unseemly to gainsay her teaching. But—ha! what know I?" "For me," said Messire Renaud, a little grandiloquently, "I believe that death is simply the dissolution of that which seems, and leaves only the pure essence of that which is. The modicum of spirit—of that essence—which I call my soul, will then be absorbed into the great soul of the Universe—the Unknowable, the Unknown." "We have a name for that, Messire," said Guy reverently. "We call it—God." "Precisely," answered Messire Renaud. "You—we—holy Church—personify this Unknowable Essence, which is the fountain of all essence. The parable—for a parable it is—is most beautiful. But It—He—name it as you will—is none the less the Unknown and the Unknowable." "The boy must have a fever, and the delirium is on him," said the Baron. "Get a leech, lad. Let out a little of that hot blood which mystifies thy foolish brains." There was silence for a minute, and it was broken by the low, quiet voice of Lady Judith, who sat next to the Lady Queen, with a spindle in her hand. "’And this is life eternal, that they should _know Thee_.’" She added no more. "Beautiful words, truly," responded Messire Renaud. "But you will permit me to observe, Lady, that they are—like all similar phrases—symbolical. The soul that has risen the nearest to this ineffable Essence—that is most free from the shell of that which seems—may, in a certain typical sense, be said to ’know’ this Essence. Now there never was a soul more free from the seeming than that of Him whom we call our Lord. Accordingly, He tells us that—employing one of the loveliest of all types—He ’knew the Father.’ It is perfectly charming, to an enlightened mind, to recognise the force, the beauty, the hidden meaning, of these exquisite types."