He can say a _plain thing in a
plain way.'_
'Here,' said Mr Hard to the priest, 'is ten pounds. Send it to this
bookseller Fingle and he shall choose books on Catholicism to that
amount, and you shall receive them, and I will come and read them here
with you.'
So the priest sent the money, and in four days the books came, and Mr
Hard and the priest opened the package, and these were the books
inside:
_Auricular Confession:_ a History. By a Brand Saved from the Burning.
_Isabella; or, The Little Female Jesuit._ By 'Hephzibah'.
_Elisha MacNab:_ a Tale of the French Huguenots.
_England and Rome._ By the Rev. Ebenezer Catchpole of Emmanuel,
Birmingham.
_Nuns and Nunneries._ By 'Ruth', with a Preface by Miss Carran, lately
rescued from a Canadian Convent.
_History of the Inquisition._ By Llorente.
_The Beast with Seven Heads; or, the Apocalyptical Warning._
_No Truce with the Vatican._
_The True Cause of Irish Disaffection._
_Decline of the Latin Nations._
_Anglo-Saxons the Chosen Race,_ and their connexion with the Ten Lost
Tribes: with a map.
Finally, a very large book at the bottom of the case called _Giant
Pope._
And it was no use asking for the money back or protesting. Mr Fingle
was an honest, straightforward man, who said a plain thing in a plain
way. They had left him to choose a suitable collection of books on
Catholicism, and he had chosen the best he knew. And thus did Mr Hard
(who has recently given a hideous font to the new Catholic church at
Bismarckville) learn the importance of estimating what words connote.
LECTOR. But all that does not excuse an intolerable prolixity?
AUCTOR. Neither did I say it did, dear Lector. My object was merely to
get you to San Lorenzo where I bought that wine, and where, going out
of the gate on the south, I saw suddenly the wide lake of Bolsena all
below.
It is a great sheet like a sea; but as one knows one is on a high
plateau, and as there is but a short dip down to it; as it is round
and has all about it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it
for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure water; and there are
islands in it and palaces on the islands. Indeed it was an impression
of silence and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to heaven,
and, in the sky above me, the moon at her quarter hung still pale in
the daylight, waiting for glory.
I sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little of my wine, ate a little
bread and sausage; but still song demanded some outlet in the cool
evening, and companionship was more of an appetite in me than
landscape. Please God, I had become southern and took beauty for
granted.
Anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come through the gate,
harnessed to a ramshackle little pony, bony and hard, and driven by a
little, brown, smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair, I
made a sign to him and he stopped.
This time there was no temptation of the devil; if anything the
advance was from my side. I was determined to ride, and I sprang up
beside the driver. We raced down the hill, clattering and banging and
rattling like a piece of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began
to sing. I sang in turn. He sang of Italy, I of four countries:
America, France, England, and Ireland. I could not understand his
songs nor he mine, but there was wine in common between us, and
_salami_ and a merry heart, bread which is the bond of all mankind,
and that prime solution of ill-ease - I mean the forgetfulness of
money.
That was a good drive, an honest drive, a human aspiring drive, a
drive of Christians, a glorifying and uplifted drive, a drive worthy
of remembrance for ever. The moon has shone on but few like it though
she is old; the lake of Bolsena has glittered beneath none like it
since the Etruscans here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph.
It broke my vow to pieces; there was not a shadow of excuse for this
use of wheels: it was done openly and wantonly in the face of the wide
sky for pleasure. And what is there else but pleasure, and to what
else does beauty move on? Not I hope to contemplation! A hideous
oriental trick! No, but to loud notes and comradeship and the riot of
galloping, and laughter ringing through old trees. Who would change
(says Aristippus of Pslinthon) the moon and all the stars for so much
wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned? The honest man!
And in his time (note you) they did not make the devilish deep and
fraudulent bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your liquor.
Moreover if I broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if I
neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect I will confess
to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a
healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And
what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no
Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter looks with a
kindly eye.
Now, just at the very entry to Bolsena, when we had followed the
lovely lake some time, my driver halted and began to turn up a lane to
a farm or villa; so I, bidding him good-night, crossed a field and
stood silent by the lake and watched for a long time the water
breaking on a tiny shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves.
