"I'm afraid I shall give a lot of trouble," he murmured, looking doubtfully at this sparkling-eyed, blue-chinned young man, who spoke with such rapidity.

"Not in the least, I a.s.sure you." He turned to the older priest.

"The Cardinal left here only half an hour ago. How unfortunate!

He came over to arrange the final details of the disputation.

You've heard of that?"

"Not a word."

The young prelate beamed.

"Well, you'll hear the finest wit in France! It's for this afternoon." (His face fell.) "But it's Latin. Perhaps Monsignor ought not----"

"Ah! so long as he doesn't talk---!" (Father Jervis turned to his friend.) "I was telling Monsignor here that the doctor ordered you to engage in no business that did not interest you; and that Latin was rather a strain to you just now----"

This seemed adroit enough. But Monsignor was determined to miss no new experience.

"It will simply delight me," he said. "And what is the subject?"

"Well," said the Frenchman, "it's for the benefit of the Emperor. Two of the Parisian theologians are disputing _De Ecclesia_. The thesis of the adversary, who opens, is that the Church is merely the representative of G.o.d on earth--a Society that must, of course, be obeyed; but that Infallibility is not necessary to her efficiency."

Father Jervis' eyes twinkled.

"Isn't that a little too pointed? Why, that's the Emperor's one difficulty! I understand that he allows, politically speaking, the need for the Church, but denies her divinity."

"I a.s.sure you," said the French priest solemnly, "that the thesis is his own selection. You see, he's sick of these Socialists. He understands perfectly that the one sanction of human authority must come from G.o.d, or from the people; and he's entirely on G.o.d's side! But he cannot see the infallibility, and therefore, as he's a sincere man---!" he ended with an eloquent shrug.

"Well," said Father Jervis, "if the Cardinal's not here----"

"Alas! He is back in Paris by now. But give me your letters! I'll see that they are presented properly; and you shall receive a royal command for the disputation in plenty of time."

They handed over their letters; they exchanged compliments once more; they were escorted as far as the door of the room by the prelate, across the next ante-chamber by an imposing man in black velvet with a chain, across the third by a cuira.s.sier, and across the hall to the bottom of the steps by two tremendous footmen in the ancient royal livery.

Monsignor was silent for a few yards.

"Aren't you afraid of an anti-clerical reaction?" he asked suddenly.

"How do you mean? I don't understand."

Then Monsignor launched out. He had accepted by now the theory that he had had a lapse of memory, and that so far as his intellect was concerned, he was practically a man of a century ago, owing to the history he had happened to be reading shortly before his collapse; and he talked therefore from that standpoint.

He produced, that is to say, with astonishing fluency all those arguments that were common in the mouths of the more serious anti-clericals of the beginning of the century--the increase of Religious Orders, the domineering tendency of all ecclesiastics in the enjoyment of temporal power, the impossibility of combating supernatural arguments, the hostility of the Church to education--down even to the celibacy of the clergy. He paused for breath as they turned out of the great gateway.

Father Jervis laughed aloud and patted him on the arm.

"My dear Monsignor, I can't compete with you. You're too eloquent. Of course, I remember from reading history that those things used to be said, and I suppose Socialists say them now.

But, you know, no educated man ever dreams of such arguments; nor indeed do the uneducated! It's the half-educated, as usual, who's the enemy. He always is. The Wise Men and the shepherds both knelt in Bethlehem. It was the bourgeois who stood apart."

"That's no answer," persisted the other.

"Well, let's see," said the priest good-humouredly. "We'll begin with celibacy. Now it's perfectly true that it's thought almost a disgrace for a man not to have a large family. The average is certainly not less than ten in civilized nations. But for all that a priest is looked upon without any contempt at all. Why?

Because he's a spiritual father; because he begets spiritual children to G.o.d, and feeds and nourishes them. Of course to an atheist this is nonsense; and even to an agnostic it's a very doubtful benefit. But, my dear Monsignor, you must remember that these hardly exist amongst us. The entire civilized world of to-day is as absolutely convinced of Heaven and Grace and the Church, and the havoc that Sin makes not only as regards the next world but in this--so absolutely convinced that he understands perfectly that a priest is far more productive of general good than a physical father possibly can be. It's the priest who keeps the whole thing going. Don't you see? And then, in a Catholic world, the instinct that the man who serves the altar should be without physical ties--well, that's simply natural."

"Go on. What about education?"

"My dear friend," said Father Jervis. "The Church controls the whole of education, as she did, in fact, up to the very time when the State first took it away from her and then abused her for neglecting it. Practically all the scientists; all the specialists in medicine, chemistry, and mental health; nine-tenths of the musicians; three-quarters of the artists--practically all those are Religious. It's only the active trades, which are incompatible with Religion, that are in the hands of the laity. It's been found by experience that no really fine work can be done except by those who are familiar with divine things; because it's only those who see things all round, who have, that is to say, a really comprehensive intuition. Take history. Unless you have a really close grasp of what Providence means--of not only the End, but the Means by which G.o.d works; unless you can see right through things to their Intention, how in the world can you interpret the past? Don't you remember what Manners said about Realism? We don't want misleading photographs of externals any more. We want Ideas. And how can you correlate Ideas, unless you have a real grasp of the Central Idea? It's nonsense."

"Go on with the other things."

"There's a lot more about education. There's the graduated education we have now (entirely an ecclesiastical notion, by the way). We don't try to teach everybody everything. We teach a certain foundation to every one--the Catechism, of course, two languages perfectly, the elements of physical science, and a great deal of history. (You can't understand the Catechism without history, and _vice-versa_); but after that we specialize.

Well, the world understands now----"

"That's enough, thank you. Go on with the other things."

Father Jervis laughed again.

"We're nearly home. Let's turn in here, and get into the gardens for a bit. . . . Well, I think you'll find that the root of all your difficulties is that you seem not to be able to get into your head that the world is really and intelligently Christian.

There are the Religious Orders you spoke of. Well, aren't the active Religious Orders the very finest form of a.s.sociation ever invented? Aren't they exactly what Socialists have always been crying for, with the blunders left out and the gaps filled in? As soon as the world understood finally that the active Religious Orders could beat all other forms of a.s.sociation at their own game--that they could teach and work more cheaply and effectively, and so on--well, the most foolish Political Economist had to confess that the Religious Orders made for the country's welfare. And as for the Contemplative Orders----"

Father Jervis' face grew grave and tender.

"Yes?"

"Why, they're the princes of the world! They are models of the Crucified. So long as there is Sin in the world, so long must there be Penance. The instant Christianity was accepted, the Cross stood up dominant once more. . . . And then . . . then people understood. Why, they're the Holy Ones of the universe--higher than angels; for they suffer. . . ."

There was a moment's silence.

"Yes?" said Monsignor softly.

"My dear Monsignor, just force upon your mind the fact that the world is really and intelligently Christian. I think it'll all be plain then. You seem to me, if I may say so, to be falling into the old-fashioned way of looking at 'Clericalism,' as it used to be called, as a kind of department of life, like Art or Law. No wonder men resented its intrusion when they conceived of it like that. Well, there is no 'Clericalism' now, and therefore there is no anti-Clericalism. There's just religion--as a fact.

Do you see? ... Shall we sit down for a few minutes? Aren't the gardens exquisite?"

(III)

Monsignor Masterman sat that night at his window, looking out at the stars and the night and the blotted glimmering gardens beneath; and it seemed to him as if the Dream deepened every day.

Things grew more, not less marvellous, with his appreciation of the simplicity of it all.

From three to seven he had sat in one of the seats on the right of the royal dais, reserved for prelates, almost immediately opposite the double-pulpited platform, itself set in the midst of the long outer side of the great gallery of Versailles, through which access was to be had to the little old private rooms of Marie Antoinette, and had listened spell-bound to two of the greatest wits of France, respectively attacking and defending, with extraordinary subtlety and fire, the claim of the Church to Infallibility. The disputation had been conducted on scholastic lines, all verbal etiquette being carefully observed; again and again he had heard, first on one side a string of arguments adduced against the doctrine, then on the other a torrent of answers, with the old half-remembered words "Distinguo," "Nego,"

"Concedo"; and the reasoning on both sides had appeared to him astonishingly brilliant. And all this before two sovereigns: the one keen, vivacious, and appreciative; the other heavy, patient, considerate--two sovereigns, treated, as the elaborate etiquette of the whole affair showed plainly enough, as kings indeed--men who stood for authority, and the grades and the differentiation of functions, as emphatically as the old democratic hand-shaking statesmen, dressed like their own servants, stood for the other complementary principle of the equality of men. For alongside of all this tremendous pomp there was a very practical recognition of the "People"; since the whole disputation was conducted in the presence of a crowd drawn, it seemed, from almost every cla.s.s, who pressed behind the barriers, murmured, laughed gleefully, and now and again broke out into low thunders of applause, as the Catholic champion drove logic home, or turned aside the infidel shaft.

The very thesis amazed the man, for the absolute necessity of an authoritative supra-national Church, with supernatural sanctions, seemed a.s.sumed as an axiom of thought, not merely by these Catholics, but by the entire world, Christian and un-Christian alike. More than once the phrase "It is conceded by all men"

flashed out, and pa.s.sed unrebuked, in support of this claim. The only point of dispute between reasoning beings seemed to be not as to whether or no the Church must be treated practically as infallible, but whether dogmatically and actually she were so!

As he sat here now at his window, Father Jervis' words began to come back with new force. Was it indeed true that the only reason why he found these things strange was that he could not yet quite bring home to his imagination the fact that the world now was convincedly Christian as a whole? It began to appear so.

For somewhere in the back of his mind (why, he knew not) there lurked a sort of only half-perceived a.s.sumption that the Catholic religion was but one aspect of truth--one point of view from which, with sufficient though not absolute truth, facts could be discerned. He could not understand this; yet there it was. And he understood, at any rate intellectually, that if he could once realize that the dogmas of the Church were the dogmas of the universe; and not only that, but that the world convincedly realized it too;--why then, the fact that the civilization of to-day was actually moulded upon it would no longer bewilder him.