"The
Hat Of The Virgin Mary," He Would Say - "What Next?" Then, Accosting Some
Ordinary Citizen Not In The Procession
- Any butcher or baker - he would
receive a shock of another kind; he would be appalled at the man's
language
Of contemptuous derision towards everything which he, the
Anglo-Saxon, holds sacred in biblical tradition. There is no attempt,
here, at "reconciliation." The classes calling themselves enlightened
are making a clean sweep of the old gods in a fashion that bewilders us
who have accustomed ourselves to see a providential design in everything
that exists (possibly because our acquaintance with a providentially-
designed Holy Office is limited to an obsolete statute, the genial
de haeretico comburendo). The others, the fetishists, have
remained on the spiritual level of their own saints. And there we stand
today. That section so numerous in England, the pseudo-pagans,
crypto-Christians, or whatever obscurantists like Messrs. A. J. Balfour
and Mallock like to call themselves (the men who, with disastrous
effects, transport into realms of pure intelligence the spirit of
compromise which should be restricted to practical concerns) - that
section has no representatives hereabouts.
Fully to appreciate their attitude as opposed to ours, we must also
remember that the south Italian does not trouble himself about the
objective truth of any miracle whatever; his senses may be perverted,
but his intelligence remains outside the sphere of infection. This is
his saving grace. To the people here, the affair of Moses and the
Burning Bush, the raising of Lazarus, and Egidio's cow-revival, are on
the identical plane of authenticity; the Bible is one of a thousand
saints' books; its stories may be as true as theirs, or just as untrue;
in any case, what has that to do with his own worldly conduct?
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