he proved me too soon to be a knave again; and next, because he meant
to exhaust all those insinuations about my knavery in the past, which
"strict honour" did not permit him to countenance, in order thereby
to give colour and force to his direct charges of knavery in the
present, which "strict honour" _did_ permit him to handsel. So in the
fifth act he gave a start, and found to his horror that, in my
miserable four pages, I had committed the "enormity" of an "economy,"
which in matter of fact he had got by heart before he began the play.
Nay, he suddenly found two, three, and (for what he knew) as many as
four profligate economies in that title-page and those Reflections,
and he uses the language of distress and perplexity at this appalling
discovery.

Now why this _coup de theatre_? The reason soon breaks on us. Up to
February 1, he could not categorically arraign me for lying, and
therefore could not involve me (as was so necessary for his case), in
the popular abhorrence which is felt for the casuists of Rome: but,
as soon as ever he could openly and directly pronounce (saving his
"hault courage and strict honour") that I am guilty of three or four
new economies, then at once I am made to bear, not only my own sins,
but the sins of other people also, and, though I have been condoned
the knavery of my antecedents, I am guilty of the knavery of a whole
priesthood instead. So the hour of doom for Semei is come, and the
wise man knows what to do with him;--he is down upon me with the
odious names of "St. Alfonso da Liguori," and "Scavini" and
"Neyraguet," and "the Romish moralists," and their "compeers and
pupils," and I am at once merged and whirled away in the gulph of
notorious quibblers, and hypocrites, and rogues.

But we have not even yet got at the real object of the stroke, thus
reserved for his _finale_. I really feel sad for what I am obliged
now to say. I am in warfare with him, but I wish him no ill;--it is
very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has
never seen. It is easy enough to be irritated with friends or foes,
_vis-a-vis_; but, though I am writing with all my heart against what
he has said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkindness towards
himself. I think it necessary to write as I am writing, for my own
sake, and for the sake of the Catholic priesthood; but I wish to
impute nothing worse to Kingsley than that he has been furiously
carried away by his feelings. But wha