“I fancy, Gusta, he was not quite pleased with you last night. On going away he said something, I did n't exactly catch it, but it sounded like 'leggierezza;' he thought you had not treated his legends of St. Francis with becoming seriousness.”
“If he wanted me to be grave he oughtn't to tell me funny stories.”
“The lives of the saints, Gusta!”
“Well, dearest, that scene in the forest where St. Francis asked the devil to flog him, and not to desist, even though he should be weak enough to implore it—was n't that dialogue as droll as anything in Boccaccio?”
“It's not decent, it's not decorous to laugh at any incident in the lives of holy men.”
“Holy men, then, should never be funny, at least when they are presented to me, for it's always the absurd side of everything has the greatest attraction for me.”
“This is certainly not the spirit which will lead you to the Church!”
“But I thought I told you already, dearest, that it 's the road I like, not the end of the journey. Courtship is confessedly better than marriage, and the being converted is infinitely nicer than the state of conviction.”
“Oh, Gusta, what are you saying?”
“Saying what I most fervently feel to be true. Don't you know, better even than myself, that it is the zeal to rescue me from the fold of the heretics surrounds me every evening with monsignori and vescovi, and attracts to the sofa where I happen to sit, purple stockings and red, a class of adorers, I am free to own, there is nothing in the lay world to compare with; and don't you know, too, that the work of conversion accomplished, these seductive saints will be on the look-out for a new sinner?”