The chairman had graduated at Salamanca.

"My Lord," I interposed charitably, "I don't want to interfere with this interesting examination, but my sense of cla.s.sical perfection and propriety is offended by this word in the syllabus of to-day's Conference. There is no such word in the Latin language as 'Primigeniis,'--'De Primigeniis textibus Sacrae Scripturae--'"

"Now, Father Dan, this won't do," shouted the chairman. "I see what you're up to. There must be no interruptions here. Very good, Father Michael, very good indeed! Now, we'll take another. Father Dan, if you interrupt again, I'll put you into the hat. Well, number eighteen! Let me see. Ah, yes. Father Irwin!"

Poor Father Michael looked unhappy and discomfited. It is a funny paradox that that good and holy priest, who, his parishioners declared, "said Ma.s.s like an angel," so that not one of his congregation could read a line of their prayer-books, so absorbed were they in watching him, couldn't explain _in totidem verbis_ the Rubrics he was daily and accurately practising.

Which, perhaps, exemplifies a maxim of the Chinese philosopher:--

"One who talks does not know.

One who knows does not talk.

Therefore the sage keeps his mouth shut, And his sense-gates closed."

Before Father Irwin was questioned, however, there was a delightful interlude.

Some one asked whether it was lawful for any one, not a bishop, to wear a zucchetto during the celebration of Ma.s.s. As usual, there was a pleasant diversity of opinion, some contending that the privilege was reserved to the episcopate, inasmuch as the great rubricists only contemplated bishops in laying down the rules for the removal and a.s.sumption of the zucchetto; others again maintained that any priest might wear one; and others limited the honor to regulars, who habitually wore the tonsure. The chairman, however, stopped the discussion peremptorily, and again asked (this time a very aged priest) the question he had put to Father Delany. The old man answered promptly:--

"The zucchetto, or pileolus, is removed at the end of the last secret prayer, and resumed after the ablutions."

"Quite right," said the chairman.

"By the way," said the old man, "you p.r.o.nounce that word pileolus.

The word is pileolus."

"The word is pileolus," said the chairman, whose throne wasn't exactly lined with velvet this day.

"Pardon me. The word is pileolus. You find it as such in the scansions of Horace."

"This is your province, Father Dan," said the bishop. "There's no one in the diocese so well qualified to adjudicate here--"

"'Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi--'

my Lord!" said I. I was drawing the bishop out. "There were ironical cheers at 'Agamemnona.'"

"'Mutato nomine, de te Fabula narratur,'"

said the bishop, smiling. "Of course, we have many a rich depositary of cla.s.sical lore here,

"'At suave est ex magno tollere acervo.'"

"My Lord," said I, pointing around the table,

"'Omnes hi metuunt versus, odere poetas,'"--

("Oh! Oh! Oh!" from the Conference.)

"'Nec recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus Non ubivis coramve quibuslibet.'"

Here the Master of Conference, seeing that the bishop was getting the worst of it, though his Lordship is a profound scholar, broke in:--

"'Ohe!

Jam satis est! Dum aes exigitur, dum mula ligatur, Tota abit hora.'"

He looked at me significantly when he said, "dum mula ligatur," but I had the victory, and I didn't mind.

"Now, look here, Father Dan, you're simply intolerable. The Conference can't get along so long as you are here. You are forever intruding your cla.s.sics when we want theology."

"I call his Lordship and the Conference to witness," I said, "that I did not originate this discussion. In fact, I pa.s.sed over in charitable silence the chairman's gross misp.r.o.nunciation of an ordinary cla.s.sical word, although I suffered the tortures of Nessus by my forbearance--"

"There will be no end to this, my Lord," said the chairman. "That'll do, Father Dan. Now, Father Irwin."

I was silent, but I winked softly at myself.

CHAPTER XXIII

A BATTLE OF GIANTS

"Now, Father Irwin," said the chairman, addressing a smart, keen-looking young priest who sat at the end of the table, "you have just come back to us from Australia; of course, everything is perfect there. What do you think--are the particles in a ciborium, left by inadvertence, outside the corporal during consecration consecrated? Now, just reflect for a moment, for it is an important matter."

"Unquestionably they are," said the young priest confidently.

"They are _not_," replied the chairman. "The whole consensus of theologians is against you."

"For example?" said Father Irwin coolly.

"Wha-at?" said the chairman, taken quite aback.

"I doubt if all theologians are on your side," said Father Irwin. "Would you be pleased to name a few?"

"Certainly," said the chairman, with a pitying smile at this young man's presumption. "What do you think of Benedict XIV., Suarez, and St.

Alphonsus?"

The young man didn't seem to be much crushed under the avalanche.

"They held that there should be reconsecration?"

"Certainly."

"Let me see. Do I understand you aright? The celebrant intends from the beginning to consecrate those particles?"

"Yes."

"The intention perseveres to the moment of consecration?"