But Abbé Marle obstinately repeated: 'Outside the pale of Catholicism there is only darkness.' 'Why, Catholicism is toppling over!' exclaimed Hermeline. 'It's for that very reason that we have to raise another social framework.' The priest, no doubt, was conscious of the supreme battle which Catholicism was waging against the spirit of science, whose victory spread day by day. But he would not acknowledge it; he did not even admit that his church was gradually emptying. 'Catholicism!' he resumed, 'its framework is still so solid, so eternal, so divine, that you copy it when you talk of raising I know not what atheistical State in which you would replace the Deity by some mechanical contrivance appointed to instruct and govern men!' 'Some mechanical contrivance, why not!' retorted Hermeline, exasperated by the touch of truth contained in the priest's attack. 'Rome has never been aught but a wine-press, pressing out the blood of the world!' When their discussions reached this violent stage Doctor Novarre usually intervened in his smiling and conciliatory way. 'Come, come, don't get heated!' said he. 'You are on the point of agreeing, since you have got so far as to accuse one another of copying your religions one from the other.' Short and spare, with a slender nose and keen eyes, the doctor was a man of a tolerant, gentle, but slightly sarcastic turn of mind, one who, having given himself to science, refused to let himself be excited by political and social questions. Like Jordan, whose great friend he was, he often said that he only adopted truths when they had been scientifically demonstrated. Modest, timid, too, as he was, without any ambition, he contented himself with healing his patients to the best of his ability, and his only passion was for the rosebushes which he cultivated between the four walls of the garden of the little dwelling where he lived in happy peacefulness.