"
"You are making a jest of it, I suspect," said the father: "that
is very wrong. If you were to talk in that way in places where you
were not known, some people might take it amiss and charge you with
turning sacred subjects into ridicule."
"That, father, is a charge from which I could very easily
vindicate myself; for certain I am that whoever will be at the trouble
to examine the true meaning of my words will find my object to be
precisely the reverse; and perhaps, sir, before our conversations
are ended, I may find an opportunity of making this very amply
apparent."
"Ho, ho," cried the monk, "there is no laughing in your head now."
"I confess," said I, "that the suspicion that I intended to
laugh at things sacred would be as painful for me to incur as it would
be unjust in any to entertain it."
"I did not say it in earnest," returned the father; "but let us
speak more seriously."
"I am quite disposed to do so, if you prefer it; that depends upon
you, father. But I must say, that I have been astonished to see your
friends carrying their attentions to all sorts and conditions of men
so far as even to regulate the legitimate gains of sorcerers."
"One cannot write for too many people," said the monk, "nor be too
minute in particularising cases, nor repeat the same things too
often in different books. You may be convinced of this by the
following anecdote, which is related by one of the gravest of our
fathers, as you may well suppose, seeing he is our present Provincial-
the reverend Father Cellot: 'We know a person,' says he, 'who was
carrying a large sum of money' in his pocket to restore it, in
obedience to the orders of his confessor, and who, stepping into a
bookseller's shop by the way, inquired if there was anything new?-
numquid novi?- when the bookseller showed him a book on moral
theology, recently published; and turning over the leaves
carelessly, and without reflection, he lighted upon a passage
describing his own case, and saw that he was under no obligation to
make restitution: upon which, relieved from the burden of his
scruples, he returned home with a purse no less heavy, and a heart
much lighter, than when he left it- abjecta scrupuli sarcina,
retento auri pondere, levior domum repetiit.
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