"Perfectly," answered Delapine, "she has quite forgiven Payot, and will welcome him again most cordially." "What?" cried Villebois, "Is it really a fact that you have succeeded in twisting her round your little finger as well?" "Why not? It was the easiest thing in the world." "Well, ma foi, I never could all the years I have been married. You are a marvel, professor, that's all I can say." CHAPTER XI A REMARKABLE CONVERSATION "Who will absolve you bad Christians? 'Study,' I replied, 'and Knowledge.'" Conrade Muth in a letter to Peter Eberdach, 1510. Sempre di verita non è convinto Chi di parole è vinto Guarini (_Il Pastor Fido_, Act v., Sc. v.) "I do not doubt the probability of a future life even for a moment. This life is too sad, too incomplete to satisfy our highest aspirations and desires. It is meant to be a struggle to ennoble us. Can that struggle be in vain? I think not! Final perfection, I believe in; a perfection which God has in the end in store for us."--Bismarck. _Conversations with Prince Bismarck_, by W.B. Richmond, _North American Review_, Sept., 1914. "At last, gentlemen," said Villebois to his three guests, "we can take our coffee in peace. By the way, professor, I want you to explain why it is that the vast majority of mankind pooh-pooh all spiritualistic phenomena, and declare them to be either fraudulent or impossible?" "If you will listen to me, gentlemen, I think I can give you an answer, but I warn you it will be a long one. "In the first place there are very few men in the world who will accept, or even admit a new or unexplained fact. People will only believe in phenomena which are in strict accordance with what they have been accustomed to see or hear. In other words, they have a sort of mental antipathy against believing anything which is not in perfect harmony with known and universally accepted laws. They follow one another like a flock of sheep. "As a teacher of physics I have rarely found a single one among all my students who possessed an absolutely independent judgment. Nay, I will go further, I have met with only one or two men during the whole course of my career who were capable of recording a new observation or impression without any preconceived notions, or with even a tithe of the accuracy of a photographic camera. People even equipped with all the acumen that a scientific training can give them, absolutely refuse to believe their senses when they see a phenomenon which appears to run contrary to any of the laws of physics which have been instilled into them by their teachers. Even if the phenomena are in accordance with established laws, unless they can be explained, they doubt, or even reject them, and will much sooner believe that they are mistaken, or that their judgment is at fault, than accept the phenomena they have witnessed.