hich, as I have some
faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just now, I
must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless priests.'

'You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.'

'I assure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last two
minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is no danger
henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.'

'Sir!' said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of
Raphael's manner...., 'When you know a little more of St. Paul's
Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of those
who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to God.'

'Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank you
for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of any
future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by your hands
this manuscript of his with many thanks from me to that daughter of
yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to give pleasure to
your Deity. Henceforth the less communication which passes between me
and any member of your family, the better.' And he turned away.

'But, my dear sir!' said the honest soldier, really chagrined, 'you must
not!--we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus for the
caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you--forget it,
and forgive me, I beseech you!' and he caught both Raphael's hands in
his own.

'My very dear sir,' answered the Jew quietly; 'let me ask the same
forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant
passages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage.... But-here
we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago was fearfully
near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian. I had actually
deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the Galileans might be,
after all, the God of our old Hebrew forefathers--of Adam and Eve, of
Abraham and David, and of the rest who believed that children and
the fruit of the womb were an heritage and gift which cometh of the
Lord--and that Paul was right--actually right--in his theory that the
church was the development and fulfilment of our old national polity....
I must thank you for opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been
besotted for the moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by
the mere fact of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some
Deity who takes no de