“—For you have this Jahveh’s own history of his exploits all written down at his own dictation. I allow him candor, nor, for one so young, does he write badly. For the rest, do these cruelties, these double-dealings, these self-confessed divine blunders and miscalculations, these subornings of murders and thefts and adulteries, these punishments of the innocent, not sparing even his own family—” Florian yawned delicately, but without removing his eyes from the tumble-bug. “My dear Monsieur Janicot, that sort of talk is really rather naïve: it is, if you will pardon my frankness, quite out of date now that we have reached the eighteenth century.” “Yes, but—” “No, Monsieur Janicot, I can consent to hear no more of these sophomoric blasphemies. I must tell you I have learned that in these matters, as in all matters, it is better taste to recognize some drastic regeneration may be necessary without doing anything about it, and certainly without aligning ourselves with the foul anarchistic mockers of everything in our social chaos which is making for beauty and righteousness—” “Why, but, Monsieur the Duke,” said Janicot, “but what—!” “I must tell you I perceive, in honest sorrow, that with a desire for fescennine expression you combine a vulgar atheism and an iconoclastic desire to befoul the sacred ideas of the average man or woman, collectively scorned as the bourgeoisie—” “Yes, doubtless, this is excellent talking. Still, what—?” “I must tell you also that I very gravely suspect you to be one of those half-baked intellectuals who confuse cheap atheism, and the defiling of other men’s altars, with deep thinking; one of those moral and spiritual hooligans who resent all forms of order as an encroachment upon their diminutive, unkempt and unsavory egos; one of the kind of people who relish nasty books about sacred persons and guffaw over the amours of the angels.” “Yes, I concede the sonority of your periods; but what does all this talking mean?” “Why, monsieur,” said Florian, doubtfully, “I do not imagine that it means anything. These are merely the customary noises of well-thought-of persons in reply to the raising of any topic which they prefer not to pursue. It is but an especially dignified manner of saying that I do not care to follow the line of thought you suggest, because logic here might lead to uncomfortable conclusions and to deductions without honorable precedents.”