"'Well,' said Ravalette, 'you inform me that you desire to learn, being already learned to some extent. The views you entertain upon the Past are, in some sense, consonant with my own; and if you are willing to be taught, I am willing to instruct; and in any case, no harm can come of the abrasion of ideas, but perchance much of good.'
"I was delighted to hear Ravalette talk in this manner; for I felt that he was in some sort, notwithstanding our relative disparity of years, a congenial spirit, and I longed for him to unfold to me the rich fabric of his thought and experience. I had concluded, from a word dropped here and there, that he was at heart a believer in the Faith of Christendom, but in order to silence the lingering doubt I still entertained on that point, I put to him the following questions, and attentively noted the substance of his somewhat curious responses thereto.
"1st. Question. 'You, Monsieur Ravalette, have doubtless travelled much, and seen a great deal of this world of ours?'
"Here he interrupted me by saying, '_And several others beside!_' I asked for an explanation, but he merely waved his hand and motioned me to go on. I did so. 'Let me ask you if the result of your observations abroad, amongst men of different nations and faith-complexions, has not been a strengthening of your belief in the Mosaic teachings, generally, and in what is popularly known as Christianity?'
"Answer. 'No! In the many countries I have visited I found human nature essentially the same as we find it here in France. Men are ever the same at heart. Inwardly they are all alike, sincere, beautiful, good, and religious; outwardly, the same selfish, heedless, careless, and materialistic beings, as untamable, set, willful, and unreasonable as the heartiest cynic could wish.
"'Wherever I went I found the True Religion theoretically believed, but practically ignored and set aside on the score of inexpediency.
"'In all my travels I found but one religion, yet that religion passed current under a vast variety of names. All men alike believed in good and evil, a Heaven of some sort, and some sort of Hell likewise. I found that while at bottom Faith was everywhere the same, yet the names by which that faith was known, differed widely in different places and latitudes. For instance, I found that the Catholic or Papal, the Protestant or reformed, the Hindoo and Brahminical, the Boodhistic, Lamaic, Greek, Polytheistic, Atheistic, Deistic, Magian, Guebre, Islamic, Fetisch, and all other systems and modes of belief, were, instead of being antipodal, in fact the same at bottom. This may surprise you. Doubtless it would, were I to leave the subject just as it is. But I will explain. They are all one at bottom, inasmuch as that each and all of their respective and apparently dissimilar devotees do homage at the same shrine, of the same Great Mystery. The modes and names differ with latitude, but the _meaning_ and the principle are everywhere the same.