belongs to the Church! Our rights in this respect have been
usurped! But they shall be restored--if need be, at the point of
the--"

"You positively make my old heart leap to the fray," interrupted the
smiling, white-haired churchman. "But I feel assured that we shall
accomplish just that without violence or bloodshed, my son. You echo
my sentiments exactly on the pregnant question. And yet, by getting
Catholics employed in the public schools as teachers, and by electing
our candidates to public offices, we quietly accomplish our ends, do
we not?"

"But when will the Holy Father recognize the time as propitious for a
more decisive step in that respect?"

"Why, my son, I think you fail to see that we keep continually
stepping. We are growing by leaps and bounds in America. At the close
of the War of Independence the United States numbered some forty-five
thousand adherents to the Catholic faith. Now the number has increased
to twelve or fifteen millions. Of these, some four millions are
voters. A goodly number, is it not?"

"Then," cried the Bishop, "let the Holy Father boldly make the demand
that the States appropriate money for the support of our parochial
schools!"

Jose's ears throbbed. Before his ordination he had heard the Liturgy
for the conversion of America recited in the chapel of the seminary.
And as often he had sought to picture the condition of the New World
under the religio-political influence which has for centuries
dominated the Old. But he had always dismissed the idea of such
domination as wholly improbable, if not quite impossible in America.
Yet, since coming into the Papal Secretary's office, his views were
slowly undergoing revision. The Church was concentrating on America.
Of that there could be no doubt. Indeed, he had come to believe its
success as a future world-power to be a function of the stand which it
could secure and maintain in the United States. Now, as he strained
his ears, he could hear the aged Cardinal-Bishop's low, tense words--

"There can be no real separation of Church and State. The Church is
_not_ inferior to the civil power, nor is it in any way dependent
upon it. And the Church can never be excluded from educating and
training the young, from molding society, from making laws, and
governing, temporally and spiritually. From this attitude we shall
_never_ depart! Ours is the only true religion. England and Germany
have been spiritually dead. But, praise to the blesse