 Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that,
it is nursed, coddled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and
does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.
That wasn't law, it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion - my opinion, and I
was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's - or any
less, for that matter.
    Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook the just
complaint of the priests. The man must be punished somehow or other, so I
degraded him from his office and made him leader of the band - the new one that
was to be started. He begged hard, and said he couldn't play - a plausible
excuse, but too thin: there wasn't a musician in the country that could.
    The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning, when she found she was
going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But I told her she must bear
this cross; that while by law and custom she certainly was entitled to both the
man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so, in
Arthur the king's name I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's
fields, and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he had
carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection of
the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't make her see that sudden
passion is an extenuating circumstance in the killing of venison, - or of a
person - so I gave it up, and let her sulk it out. I did think I was going to
make her see it by remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page
modified that crime.
    »Crime!« she exclaimed. »How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth! Man, I am going
to pay for him!«
    Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training - training is everything;
training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is
no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity
and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own: they are
transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and
