“A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul-curer by profession!”
“Why, what on earth have you to do but to abhor and flee me?” asked he, with a laugh, though by no means a merry one.
“Would your having a headache be a reason for the medical man’s running away from you, or coming to visit you?”
“Ah, but this, you know, is my ‘fault,’ and my ‘crime,’ and my ‘sin.’ Eh?” and he laughed again.
“Would the doctor visit you the less, because it was your own fault that your head ached?”
“Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in his powers of curing, and had a great hankering after unaccredited Homœopathies, like Mr. Windrush’s; would not that be a fair cause for interdiction from fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial?”
“Come, come, Templeton,” I said; “you shall not thus jest away serious thoughts with an old friend. I know you are ill at ease. Why not talk over the matter with me fairly and soberly? How do you know till you have tried, whether I can help you or not?”
“Because I know that your arguments will have no force with me; they will demand of me or assume in me, certain faculties, sentiments, notions, experiences—call them what you like; I am beginning to suspect sometimes with Cabanis that they are ‘a product of the small intestines’—which I never have had, and never could make myself have, and now don’t care whether I have them or not.”
“On my honour, I will address you only as what you are, and know yourself to be. But what are these faculties, so strangely beyond my friend Templeton’s reach? He used to be distinguished at college for a very clear head, and a very kind heart, and the nicest sense of honour which I ever saw in living man; and I have not heard that they have failed him since he became Templeton of Templeton. And as for his Churchmanship, were not the county papers ringing last month with the accounts of the beautiful new church which he had built, and the stained glass which he brought from Belgium, and the marble font which he brought from Italy; and how he had even given for an altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Templeton House?”
“Effeminate picture!” he said. “It was part and parcel of the idea—”