“Excellent!” exclaimed Don Paolo with a laugh. The others maintained a frigid silence. The Abbé continued:
“Furthermore, I do not believe any good can be achieved through this league. Associations may be useful in helping to raise salaries, they may promote industries and commerce; but science and truth, never. Reforms will surely be brought about some day, because ideas are stronger than men, and are always pressing forward; but by arraying them in armour, and marching them forward in companies, you expose them to a terrible fire, which will check their progress for a long time to come. Science and religion progress only through the individual, through the Messiah. Have you a saint among you? Do you know where to look for one? Then find him and let him march forward. Fiery language, broad charity, two or three little miracles, and your Messiah alone will achieve more than all of you together.”
The Abbé was silent, and Giovanni rose to speak.
“Perhaps the Abbé,” said he, “has not yet been able to form a true conception of the value of the union we desire. We have just prayed together, seeking to stand united in the Divine Presence. This is sufficient to indicate the character of our union. In consideration of the ills afflicting the Church—which in substance are the result of discord between her mutable human element and her immutable element of Divine Truth—we wish, in our desire that He may remove these discords, to become one in the God of Truth; and we wish to feel ourselves united. Such a union has no need of community of opinion on certain subjects, although many of us hold many opinions in common. We do not propose to create a collective movement, either public or private, in order to bring about this or that reform. I am old enough to remember the time of the Austrian domination. If the Lombard and Venetian patriots called us together in those days to talk of politics, it was by no means always in order to conspire, nor to determine revolutionary acts; it was to enable us to communicate news, to become acquainted, to keep the flame of the idea alive. This is what we wish to do in the religious field. The Abbé Marinier may rest assured that that negative accord of which he spoke will amply suffice. We must strive to widen it, that it may embrace the majority of the intelligent faithful; that it may even reach the Hierarchy. He will see that positive accord will ripen in it, mysteriously, as the seed of life ripens in the decaying body of the fruit. Yes, yes, the negative accord is sufficient. The feeling that the Church of Christ is suffering is sufficient to unite us in the love of our Mother, and to move us at least to pray for her, we and our brothers who, like us, feel her sufferings! What is your answer, Abbé?”
The Abbé murmured with a faint smile:
“C’est beau, mais ce n’est pas la logique.”
Don Paolo started up:
“Logic has nothing to do with it.” “Ah!” Marinier replied, assuming a contrite expression, “if you intend to forego logic——!”
Don Paolo, all on fire, wished to protest, but Professor Dane signed to him to be calm.
“We do not intend to forego logic,” said he, “but it is not as easy to measure the logical value of a conclusion in questions of sentiment, of love of faith, as it is to measure the logical value of a conclusion in geometrical problems. In the questions which interest us the logical process is hidden. Surely my dear friend Marinier, one of the most acute-minded men I know, when he answered my dear friend Selva, did not intend to imply that when a person very dear to us falls ill, it is necessary for us to decide what method of treatment to adopt before hastening to his bedside together.”