“Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.” The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:— “O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!” The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock. After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:— “The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is God.” The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in death. The supreme moment was approaching. The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man. “This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be regrettable if we had met in vain?” The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom was imprinted on his countenance.