hope for is to remain one tolerated and respected sect among many; but even this hope may not be fulfilled, because there are points on which you are professedly opposed to tolerance, and which, sooner or later, must involve you in a struggle with it to which there can only be one ending. If your dream is to make England and English countries Catholic again, it must be by re-casting Catholicism in the mould shaped by the spirit of the age; for to attempt the opposite course, that of bringing the English-speaking peoples under the Papal yoke, is only to court certain and probably swift destruction.’
‘But I cherish no such illusions, Mr Bristley,’ answered the cardinal, with a more gloomy expression than before. ‘You are right, I must admit, in what you say about our hold on this country. I do not mind admitting it to such exceptional disputants as you two, although I should not say it from the pulpit; but it is unfortunately true that, after all our efforts, the bulk of the English people still look upon our doings and our ceremonial as if they were nothing but a money-making entertainment. Where we give them good music, they will come to our churches for that, and they look with a languid curiosity at what is going on at the high altar. A certain number of flies get caught in the paste on these occasions, no doubt’—his two listeners chuckled at hearing the chief priest thus express himself concerning the winning of souls to Christ’s Church—‘but the multitude gets further away every year from genuine belief in our religion or in any other. People patronise it, as you have said, according to their tastes, but none, except, perhaps, a few washy girls in their teens, bow their wills to it as of old.’
‘Then what do you propose to do, Cardinal Power?’ inquired Lesbia, looking’ steadfastly at him again with her serious, searching eyes. ‘To lie for ever stifled amid the
