i wish it. I now have a
presentiment that he will not stay, but will go to Rome. This, however,
is only my impression; I have no positive knowledge.

As to his wishing to convert me, I do not know whether it would be an
easy task or not, or whether Maironi thinks anything about it. You will
notice that I call him Maironi in writing to you; in speaking to him I
call him simply Benedetto, for that is his wish. I am sure Giovanni once
thought of converting me. He found it so easy that he never speaks of it
to me now. I should not think the same of Maironi. I believe that to him
Christianity means, above all things, actions and life according to the
spirit of Christ, of the risen Christ who lives for ever among us, of
whom we have, as he puts it, the experience. It seems to me that the
object of his religious mission is, not the placing of the creed of one
Christian Church before another, although there is no doubt the holiness
of the life he leads is strictly Catholic. Whenever I have heard
him speak of dogmas, with Giovanni, it has never been to discuss the
difference between Church and Church, but rather to expound certain
formulas of faith, and to show what a strong light emanates from
them when they are expounded in a certain way. Giovanni himself is
past-master at this, but when Giovanni speaks you are impressed above
all, by the immense store of knowledge his mind contains; when Maironi
speaks you feel that the living Christ is in his heart, the risen
Christ, and he fires you! In order to be perfectly, scrupulously
sincere, I will tell you that although I do not think he intends to
convert me, still I am not very sure of this. One day we were in the
olive-grove. He and Giovanni were discussing a German book on the
essence of Christianity, which, it seems, has made a stir, and was
written by a Protestant theologian. Maironi observed that, when
this Protestant speaks of Catholicism, he does so with a most honest
intention of being impartial, but that, in reality, he does not know the
Catholic religion. His opinion is that no Protestant does really
know it; they are all of them full of prejudices, and believe certain
external and remediable abuses in its practices to be essential to
Catholicism. There was a basket of apricots standing near, and he chose
one which had been very fine, but which was beginning to rot. "Here,"
said he, "is an apricot, which is slightly rotten. If I offer this
apricot to one who does not know