The Abbé kindly copied it out for me next day, but I must quote from memory.
"Christianity is a stretching down of the Divinity to Man.
"Theosophy is the attempt of Man, by his own efforts, to reach the Divine."
We had sat from nine P.M. till one A.M., and I think we were all relieved when an adjournment for supper was suggested by Lady Caithness.
Her son, the Duc de Pomar, joined us for _this_ part of the evening, and was introduced to me. My enjoyment of the excellent fare, after so many hours of exhaustion, was only tempered by an unfortunate and violent quarrel between the mother and daughter mediums, on the score of the age of the latter! The mother declared her daughter was forty-five; the daughter said: "Not a day over thirty-five," and intimated that she surely might be supposed to know her own age! The mother, however, murmured provokingly: "_Moi, je sais mieux que ça_"; and so the wrangle went on, until I made a diversion by taking leave of my hostess and promising to be present at the lecture the "following afternoon," which, by the way, had become "this afternoon" by the time I left the Hotel Wagram.
When I entered the house once more, it was to be shown into the large lecture-room previously described, which was already three parts full, and very shortly entirely so.
Lady Caithness had kindly reserved a front seat for me, so I could see and hear without difficulty. On the raised platform stood my friend the Abbé looking very grave and rather nervous. A cardinal, two bishops, and some half-dozen priests were seated close to him, and very shortly the lecture, which was, I think, extempore, began.
The Abbé was so manifestly in dead earnest and without any suspicion of _pose_, that one could not fail to be deeply impressed by the scene. It needed all the help of a sincere purpose and a brave heart, to stand up amongst those of his own cloth, and, in face of a partially indifferent and partially unfriendly audience, to declare boldly "the faith that was in him"--a faith that burned all the more brightly and warmly from the fact that it was being purged of the superstitions which must always become the accretions of every form of religion; the clinging refuse of weed and shell, which from time to time must be scraped off the bottom of the grand old ship if it is to convey us safely from port to harbour.