" For a moment he thought the spirit of
inquiry dead within him, and allowed the cry of supplication to carry him
away: "Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!" He repeated this appeal
with all his charity, clasped his hands, and gazed fixedly at the statue
of the Virgin, until he became quite giddy, and imagined that the figure
moved. Why should he not return to a state of childhood like the others,
since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely
end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among
innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under
the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But
just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him,
that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, the
stubborn work of thought, incessant and invincible, began afresh in the
depths of his brain. Little by little, notwithstanding his efforts to the
contrary, he returned to his inquiries, doubted, and sought the truth.
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