Every expedient that I explored proved
illusory, every one led to the same conclusion that the dead are
powerless. "The living do with us what they like," I muttered, and I
thought of all my Catholic relations, every one of whom believes in
the intervention of priests and holy water, the Immaculate Conception,
the Pope's Indulgences, and a host of other things which I could not
remember, so great was my anguish of mind at the thought that my poor
pagan body should be delivered helpless into their pious hands. I
remembered their faces, I could hear their voices--that of my dear
brother, whom I shall always think of as a strayed cardinal rather
than as a colonel; I could see his pale eyes moist with faith in the
intercession of the Virgin--one can always tell a Catholic at sight,
just as one can tell a consumptive. The curving lake, the pale
mountains, the low shores, the sunlight, and the haze contributed not
a little to frighten me; the country looked intensely Catholic at that
moment. My thoughts swerved, and I began to wonder if the face of a
country takes its character from the ideas of those living in it. "How
shall I escape from that vault?" I cried out suddenly. Michael Malia's
hodman had said that they might place me just above my grandfather,
and my grandfather was a man of letters, a historian whose histories I
had not read; and in the midst of the horror my probable burial
inspired in me, I found some amusement in the admission that I should
like the old gentleman whose portrait hung in the dining-room to have
read my novels.
Pages:
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399