Some dullard may here object that M. France could not himself have believed all this while writing the book, and that it was with an ironic glitter in his ink he recorded these dicta. To which the obvious answer would be that M. France (again, like all great creative writers) is an ephemeral and negligible person beside his more permanent puppets; and that, moreover, to reason thus is, it may be precipitately, to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground that an egg has no feathers.... Whatever M. France may have believed, our concern is here with the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion is all-important and all-significant. And I find it curious to observe how unerringly the abbé's thoughts aspire, from no matter what remote and low-lying starting point, to the loftiest niceties of religion and the high thin atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon his collar is but a reminder of the influence of clothes upon our moral being, and of how terrifyingly is the destiny of each person's soul dependent upon such trifles; a glass of light white wine leads, not, as we are nowadays taught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests, straightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this churchman's thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the relationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette may be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained. These problems alone engross Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public fountain; and retains so notably his composure between the opposed assaults of fluidic unfriends. What, though, is found the outcome of this philosophy, appears a question to be answered with wariness of empiricism. None can deny that Coignard says, when he lies dying: "My son, reject, along with the example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during my period of life-long folly. Do not listen to those who, like myself, subtilize over good and evil." Yet this is just one low-spirited moment, as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted years. And the utterance wrung forth by this moment is, after all, merely that sentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the moribund,--"Were I to have my life over again, I would live differently." The sentiment is familiar and venerable, but its truthfulness has not yet been attested.