And how quickly we fell to eating and drinking; Calmi began bantering with the girls, and I seconded him; then he would pass once more to analyzing the tragedy of life, and I passed with him! And Miss Martine brought her mouth close to my ear and asked me in a whisper, guard-edly: Please... tell me frankly. Does God exist or not??

I had been expecting every pos-sible question except that one... above all in those circumstances and in that atmosphere of all atmospheres... and then from a Parisian girl like Martine... I did not know what to answer her... And she asked me again, insisting:

— You seem widely read and broad in knowledge; why then do you not answer my question and spare me the anxiety that pulls me this way and that? Would it cost you such great trouble? I said to her:

— Have you asked your friend the doctor this question? He too is widely read and broad in knowledge.

— Yes, I asked him... and one moment he would say that He exists, and the next that He does not!

Calmi caught the drift of the conversation and grasped its meaning, and he remarked, lifting his nose and his eyebrows:

— It is woman, as a rule, who makes a man believe or not believe in the existence of God.

— And if there is no woman in his life?

— Then he can 'feel' the existence of God, if he has need of it, without verbal, disputatious proofs, which, once they grow tangled and deep, no longer express anything at all. Kant inked eight hundred pages, and Spinoza I don't know how many hundred pages, and others have written whole volumes, to prove the existence of God... and yet doubt still troubles the

consciences of many and disturbs their comfortable peace of mind... Martine said with a sigh:

— If only I could simply make certain whether He exists or not! I said to her:

— Set your mind at rest, Miss, and be assured that God exists in every place. And everything bears witness to His existence...

One of the young ladies agreed with a long nodding of the head

and said to Martine in the tone of a victor:

— The gentleman is right! Didn't I tell you He exists?

I do not think that anyone who saw us drawn together in that warm corner — I do not think that anyone, were he even a prophet... could have guessed the subject of our conversation, on that cold night... at the Café du Dôme... I do not think so!!..