ek. He had come to his conclusions step by step; he had reached
the great ultimatum with slowness, with care, and, he confessed, with
anguish and with reluctance. What a match was I, who brought a hasty
temper, and a limited reflection on that subject to a reasoner like
this? His candour staggered and chilled me even more than his logic.
Arguments that occurred not to me, upon my side of the question, _he_
stated at length and with force; I heard, and, till he replied to
them, I deemed they were unanswerable: the reply came, and I had no
counter-word. A meeting of this nature was often repeated; and when he
left me, tears crept into my wild eyes, my heart melted within me, and I
wept!

I must now enter more precisely than I have yet done into my state of
mind upon religious matters at the time this dispute with the Italian
occurred. To speak candidly, I had been far less shocked with his
opposition to me upon matters of doctrinal faith than with that upon
matters of abstract reasoning. Bred a Roman Catholic, though pride,
consistency, custom, made me externally adhere to the Papal Church, I
inly perceived its errors and smiled at its superstitions. And in the
busy world, where so little but present objects or _human_ anticipations
of the future engross the attention, I had never given the subject that
consideration which would have enabled me (as it has since) to separate
the dogmas of the priest from the precepts of the Saviour, and thus
confirmed my belief as the Christian by the very means which would
have loosened it as the Sectarian. So that at the time Bezoni knew me a
certain indifference to--perhaps arising from an ignorance of--doctrinal
points, rendered me little hurt by arguments against opinions which I
embraced indeed, but with a lukewarm and imperfect affection. But it was
far otherwise upon abstract points of reasoning, far otherwise, when
the hope of surviving this frail and most unhallowed being was to be
destroyed: I might have been indifferent to cavil upon _what_ was the
word of God, but never to question of the justice of God Himself. In
the whole world there was not a more ardent believer in our imperishable
nature, nor one more deeply interested in the belief. Do not let it be
supposed that because I have not often recurred to Isora's death (or
because I have continued my history in a jesting and light tone) that
that event ever passed from the memory which it had turned to bitterness
and gall. Ne