“I have not yet finished,” she said, and hastened to add:
“I have a Catholic friend—I myself am not a Catholic, I am a Protestant—who has lost her faith in God. She has been advised to devote herself to deeds of charity. She lives with her brother, who is very hostile to all religions. This innovation, the fact that his sister interests herself in charities, that she associates with people who promote good works from religious principles, is most displeasing to him. At present he is ill; he becomes irritated, excited, protests against these virtuous bigots, does not wish his sister to visit the poor, to protect young girls, or to provide for abandoned children. He says all these things are clericalism, are utopianism, that the world wags in its own way, and that it must be allowed to wag in its own way, that all this associating with the lower classes only serves to put false and dangerous ideas into their heads. Now, my friend has been told that she must either leave her brother, or lie to him, by doing secretly what she has hitherto done openly. She is in sore need of sound advice! She writes to me to ask you for it. She has read in the newspapers that you are helping so many here in these hills, and she hopes you will not refuse.”
“As her brother is ill, both bodily and mentally,” Benedetto answered, “does she not find deeds of charity to perform in her own house? Will she arrive at a knowledge of God by becoming a bad sister? Let her give up her works of charity and devote herself to her brother; let her attend to his bodily ills, and to his moral ills, with all the affection”—he was going to say “which she bears him,” but he corrected himself, that he might not thus clearly admit a knowledge of the person—“with all the affection of which she is capable; let her make herself precious to him; let her win him by degrees, without sermons, by her goodness alone. It will do her much good also, this striving to incarnate in herself true goodness, active, untiring, patient, prudent goodness. And she will win him, little by little, without words; she will persuade him that all she does is well done. Then she can take up her works of charity again, take them up alone, and she will succeed better. Now she performs them because she has been advised to do so, and perhaps she does not succeed very well. Then she will be prompted by the habit of goodness, acquired with her brother, and she will have better success.”
“I thank you!” said Noemi. “I thank you for my friend, and also for myself, for I am much pleased with what you have said. And may I repeat your advice, your words of encouragement, in your name?”
The question seemed superfluous, because the words of encouragement and advice had been spoken by Benedetto in direct answer to the friend. But Benedetto was troubled. It was an explicit message which Noemi asked of him for Jeanne.
“Who am I?” he said. “What authority do I possess? Tell her I will pray!”
Noemi was trembling inwardly. It would have been so easy now to speak to him of religion! And she did not dare. Ah! but to lose such an opportunity! No, she must speak; but she could not reflect a quarter of an hour upon what she should say. She said the first thing that came into her head.
“I beg your pardon, but as you speak of praying, I should like to ask you if you really approve of all my brother-in-law’s religious views?”
As soon as she had uttered the question, it seemed to her so impertinent, so awkward, that she was ashamed. She hastened to add, conscious she was saying something still more foolish, but, nevertheless, feeling impelled to say it. “Because my brother-in-law is a Catholic, and I am a Protestant, and I should like to know what to believe.”
“Signorina,” Benedetto answered, “the day will come when all shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, upon the hilltops; to-day it is best to worship Him in the shadows, in figures, from deep Valleys. Many there are who can rise, some higher than others, towards the spirit and the truth; but many cannot. There are plants which bear no fruit above a certain altitude, and if carried still higher, they die. It would be folly to remove them from the climate which suits them. I do not know you, and I cannot say if your brother-in-law’s religious views, planted without preparation in you, would bear good fruit. But I advise you to study Catholicism carefully, with Signor Selva’s help; for there is not one conscientious Protestant who knows it well.”