"I am really very sorry," he said smiling, "but I have not brought even the smallest thread with which to bind myself. I also am one of those who see many things going wrong in the Church. Still, when Signor Selva carefully explained his views to me (first at supper and then here), views which I had not clearly understood from my friend Professor Dane's explanation, certain objections, which I consider serious, forced themselves upon me."
"Exactly," thought Minucci, who had heard how ambitious Marinier was; "if you look for promotion, you must not join us;" and he added aloud: "Let us hear them."
"In the first place, gentlemen," the clever Abbé said, "it seems to me you have begun with the second meeting. I may say, with all due respect, that you remind me of a party of good people who sit down to a game of cards, and cannot get on because one holds Italian, one French, another German cards, and therefore they cannot understand one another. I have heard unanimity of opinions mentioned; but there exists perhaps among us rather a unanimity of negative opinions. We are probably unanimous in believing that the Catholic Church has grown to resemble a very ancient temple, originally of great simplicity, of great spirituality, which the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries have crowded with superfluities. Perhaps the more malicious among you will say that only a dead language
