ank you for your information, but I
can manage my own business. What's this you were saying?" he cried,
turning to the Master of Conferences.

"What mistakes might a priest make with his hands during celebration?"

"What mistakes? Well, he might put them in his pocket or behind his
back, or--"

"Never mind, never mind. One question more. If you wore a pileolus,
zucchetto, you know, at what part of the Mass would you remove it?"

"I wouldn't wear anything of the kind," said Father Michael; "the five
vestments are enough for me, without any new-fangled things from
Valladolid or Salamanca."

The chairman had graduated at Salamanca.

"My Lord," I interposed charitably, "I don't want to interfere with this
interesting examination, but my sense of classical perfection and
propriety is offended by this word in the syllabus of to-day's
Conference. There is no such word in the Latin language as
'Primigeniis,'--'De Primigeniis textibus Sacrae Scripturae--'"

"Now, Father Dan, this won't do," shouted the chairman. "I see what
you're up to. There must be no interruptions here. Very good, Father
Michael, very good indeed! Now, we'll take another. Father Dan, if you
interrupt again, I'll put you into the hat. Well, number eighteen! Let
me see. Ah, yes. Father Irwin!"

Poor Father Michael looked unhappy and discomfited. It is a funny
paradox that that good and holy priest, who, his parishioners declared,
"said Mass like an angel," so that not one of his congregation could
read a line of their prayer-books, so absorbed were they in watching
him, couldn't explain _in totidem verbis_ the Rubrics he was daily and
accurately practising.

Which, perhaps, exemplifies a maxim of the Chinese philosopher:--

"One who talks does not know.
One who knows does not talk.

Therefore the sage keeps his mouth shut,
And his sense-gates closed."

Before Father Irwin was questioned, however, there was a delightful
interlude.

Some one asked whether it was lawful for any one, not a bishop, to wear
a zucchetto during the celebration of Mass. As usual, there was a
pleasant diversity of opinion, some contending that the privilege was
reserved to the episcopate, inasmuch as the great rubricists only
contemplated bishops in laying down the rules for the removal and
assumption of the zucchetto; others again maintained that any priest
might wear one; and others limited the honor to regulars, who habitually
wore the tonsure. The c