I could see it pained him that was not a Catholic. He
could never quite get over this, but he was very good and tolerant.
He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those English
who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people.
This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do; and
when I told him so, he viewed me with sorrow, but henceforth
without alarm.
All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished could be a
Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant
ones. Surely there are some things which, like politics, are too
serious to be taken quite seriously. Surtout point de zele is not
the saying of a cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and
the more deep our feeling is about any matter, the more occasion
have we to be on our guard against zele in this particular respect.
There is but one step from the "earnest" to the "intense." When
St. Paul told us to be all things to all men he let in the thin end
of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say how far it was to be
driven.
I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they
think I flirt just a trifle too much with il partito nero when I am
in Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do.
"These people," they say, "make themselves very agreeable to you,
and show you their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know
their rough one.
