The learned pair looked
like two Christians who had issued from their tombs to find no God in
the heavens. Science had been powerless; acids, so much clear water;
red potash had been discredited; the galvanic battery and electric
shock had been a couple of playthings.
"A hydraulic press broken like a biscuit!" commented Planchette.
"I believe in the devil," said the Baron Japhet, after a moment's
silence.
"And I in God," replied Planchette.
Each spoke in character. The universe for a mechanician is a machine
that requires an operator; for chemistry--that fiendish employment of
decomposing all things--the world is a gas endowed with the power of
movement.
"We cannot deny the fact," the chemist replied.
"Pshaw! those gentlemen the doctrinaires have invented a nebulous
aphorism for our consolation--Stupid as a fact."
"Your aphorism," said the chemist, "seems to me as a fact very
stupid."
They began to laugh, and went off to dine like folk for whom a miracle
is nothing more than a phenomenon.
Valentin reached his own house shivering with rage and consumed with
anger. He had no more faith in anything. Conflicting thoughts shifted
and surged to and fro in his brain, as is the case with every man
brought face to face with an inconceivable fact.
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