“Like you,” said M. Bergeret, “I have been struck by this change and I have sought in vain for the causes of it. We read in many Chinese fables of a very ugly spirit, of lumpish gait, but subtle mind, who loves to play pranks. He makes his way by night into inhabited houses, then opening a sleeper’s brain, as though it were a box, he takes out the brain, puts another in its place and softly closes the skull. He takes infinite delight in passing thus from house to house, interchanging brains as he goes, and when, at dawn, this tricksy elf has returned to his temple, the mandarin awakes with the mind of a courtesan, and the young girl with the dreams of a hardened opium-eater. Some spirit of this sort must assuredly have been busy bartering French brains for those of some tame, spiritless people, who drag out a melancholy existence without rising to the height of a new desire, indifferent alike to justice and injustice. For, indeed, we are no longer at all like ourselves.” Stopping suddenly, M. Bergeret shrugged his shoulders. Then he went on, in a tone of gentle sadness: “Yet, it is the effect of age and the sign of a certain wisdom. Infancy is the age of awe and wonder; youth, of fiery revolt. It is the mere passing of the years that has brought us this mood of peaceful indifference: I ought to have understood it better. Our condition of mind, at any rate, assures us both internal and external peace.” “Do you think so?” asked Abbé Lantaigne. “And have you no presentiment of approaching catastrophe?” “Life in itself is a catastrophe,” answered M. Bergeret. “It is a constant catastrophe, in fact, since it can only manifest itself in an unstable environment, and since the essential condition of its existence is the instability of the forces which produce it. The life of a nation, like that of an individual, is a never-ceasing ruin, a series of downfalls, an endless prospect of misery and crime. Our country, though it is the finest in the world, only exists, like others, by the perpetual renewal of its miseries and mistakes. To live is to destroy. To act is to injure. But at this particular moment, Monsieur Lantaigne, the finest country in the world is feeble in action, and plays but a sluggard’s part in the drama of existence. It is that fact which reassures me, for I detect no signs in the heavens. I foresee no evils approaching with special and peculiar menace to our peaceful land. Tell me, Monsieur l’abbé, when you foretell catastrophe, is it from within or from without that you see it coming?” “The danger is all round us,” answered M. Lantaigne, “and yet you laugh.”