course of a year, ten thousand. Our arrangements have gone as far as that already."
"And I tell you," said the Bishop quietly and sweetly, "that at the end of that year not a single Karburator will be running."
"Why not?"
"Because mankind, whether believers or unbelievers, cannot do with a real and active God. We simply cannot, gentlemen. It is out of the question."
"And I tell you," Marek interposed vehemently, "that the Karburator shall be made. I'm in favour of them myself now. I mean to have them precisely because you don't want them. In spite of you, my Lord Bishop, in spite of all superstition, in spite of all Rome! And I mean to be the first to cry"—here the engineer took breath, then burst out with unmelodious enthusiam—"Success to the Perfect Karburator!"
"We shall see," said the Bishop with a sigh. "You gentlemen will live to be convinced that the venerable Consistory was right. In a year's time you will stop the manufacture of the Absolute of your own accord. But, oh, the damage, the devastation it will bring to pass in the meantime! Gentlemen, in the name of Heaven, do not imagine that the Church brings God into the world. The Church merely confines Him and controls Him. And you two unbelievers are loosing Him upon the earth like a
