“The saints? Are you so religious?”
“No, I’m not religious, I’m sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious.”
“No time. Does it need time to be religious?”
“Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can’t be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odéon Bar and all that.”
“Yes, I understand. But what was that you said about the saints?”
“Well, there are many saints I’m particularly fond of—Stephen, St. Francis and others. I often see pictures of them and of the Saviour and the Virgin—such utterly lying and false and silly pictures—and I can put up with them just as little as you could with that picture of Goethe. When I see one of those sweet and silly Saviours or St. Francises and see how other people find them beautiful and edifying, I feel it is an insult to the real Saviour and it makes me think: Why did He live and suffer so terribly if people find a