rms change. From hour to hour
evolution goes on in all things--the world changes."

"That is not true!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "the world does not change.
It continually tramps over the same ground, loses itself, strays into the
most abominable courses, and it continually has to be brought back into
the right path. That is the truth. In order that the promises of Christ
may be fulfilled, is it not necessary that the world should return to its
starting point, its original innocence? Is not the end of time fixed for
the day when men shall be in possession of the full truth of the Gospel?
Yes, truth is in the past, and it is always to the past that one must
cling if one would avoid the pitfalls which evil imaginations create. All
those fine novelties, those mirages of that famous so-called progress,
are simply traps and snares of the eternal tempter, causes of perdition
and death. Why seek any further, why constantly incur the risk of error,
when for eighteen hundred years the truth has been known? Truth! why it
is in Apostolic and Roman Catholicism as created by a long succession of
generations! What madness to desire to change it when so many lofty
minds, so many pious souls have made of it the most admirable of
monuments, the one instrument of order in this world, and of salvation in
the next!"

Pierre, whose heart had contracted, refrained from further protest, for
he could no longer doubt that he had before him an implacable adversary
of his most cherished ideas. Chilled by a covert fear, as though he felt
a faint breath, as of a distant wind from a land of ruins, pass over his
face, bringing with it the mortal cold of a sepulchre, he bowed
respectfully whilst the Cardinal, rising to his full height, continued in
his obstinate voice, resonant with proud courage: "And if Catholicism, as
its enemies pretend, be really stricken unto death, it must die standing
and in all its glorious integrality. You hear me, Monsieur l'Abbe--not
one concession, not one surrender, not a single act of cowardice!
Catholicism is such as it is, and cannot be otherwise. No modification of
the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the
smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability.
Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses by attacking them with
the pickaxe under pretence of decorating them. You only enlarge the
fissures. Even if it were true that Rome were on the eve of falling into
d