He seized them
by the wrists, and slid his black paws up their bare arms. The married
women whispered languishingly: "You have a marvellous power over women."
The husbands looked on smilingly.
Now when Hello and he and their friends and the ladies began to talk
about religious matters and got steam up, it was a veritable witches'
Sabbath, and no mistake, every voice being raised in virulent cheap Jack
denunciation of freedom, and common sense. Satan himself had dictated
Voltaire's works; now Voltaire was burning in everlasting fire.
Unbelievers ought to be exterminated; it would serve them right. Renan
ought to be hanged on the first tree that would bear him; the Black
Doctor even maintained that in Manila he would have been shot long ago.
It was always the Doctor who started the subject of the persecution of
heretics. Hello himself persecuted heretics with patronising scorn, but
was already ready to drop into a hymn of praise to the Madonna.
I had then read two of Hello's books, _Le Style_ and _M. Renan,
L'Allemagne et l'Atheisme au 19me Siecle_. Such productions are
called books, because there is no other name for them. As a matter of
fact, idle talk and galimatias of the sort are in no wise literature.
Hello never wrote anything but Roman Catholic sermons, full of
theological sophistries and abuse of thinking men.
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