he dwelt, he
wondered if he were becoming insane. He seemed to become obsessed
with the belief that his ability to think was slowly paralyzing. And
with it his will. And yet, proof that this was not the case was
found in his stubborn opposition to trite acquiescence, and in his
infrequent reversals of mood, when he would even feel an intense,
if transient, sense of exaltation in the thought that he was doing
the best that in him lay.

It was during one of these lighter moods, and at the close of a school
year, that a great joy came to him in an event which left a lasting
impress upon his life. Following close upon a hurried visit which his
uncle paid to Rome, the boy was informed that it had been arranged for
him to accompany the Papal Legate on a brief journey through Germany
and England, returning through France, in order that he might gain a
first-hand impression of the magnitude of the work which the Church
was doing in the field, and meet some of her great men. The
broadening, quieting, confidence-inspiring influence of such a journey
would be, in the opinion of Padre Rafael, incalculable. And so, with
eager, bubbling hope, the lad set out.

Whatever it may have been intended that the boy should see on this
ecclesiastical pilgrimage, he returned to Rome at the end of three
months with his quick, impressionable mind stuffed with food for
reflection. Though he had seen the glories of the Church, worshiped in
her matchless temples, and sat at the feet of her great scholars, now
in the quiet of his little room he found himself dwelling upon a
single thought, into which all of his collected impressions were
gathered: "The Church--Catholic and Protestant--is--oh, God, the
Church is--not sick, not dying, but--_dead_! Aye, it has served both
God and Mammon, and paid the awful penalty! And what is left?
_Caesarism_!" The great German and British nations were not Catholic.
But worse, the Protestant people of the German Empire were sadly
indifferent to religion. He had seen, in Berlin, men of family trying
to resell the Bibles which their children had used in preparation for
confirmation. He had found family worship all but extinct. He had
marked the widespread indifference among Protestant parents in regard
to the religious instruction of their young. He had been told there
that parents had but a slight conception of their duty as moral
guides, and that children were growing up with only sensuous pleasures
and material ga