“Is a confessor a monster in your eyes, fair lady?” said Don Juan, with that smile which Blanche held in deep though secret admiration.
“I thought they were rarely severe,” she said, bending her eyes on her work.
“Ah, Señora, our faith differs from yours much less than you think. What is a confessor, but a priest—a minister? The Señor Tremayne is a confessor, when one of his people shall wish his advice. Where lieth the difference?”
Blanche was too ignorant to know where it lay.
“I accounted there to be mighty difference,” she said, hesitatingly.
“Valgame los santos! (The saints defend me!)—but a shade or two of colour. Hold we not the same creeds as you? Your Book of Common Prayer—what is it but the translation of ours? We worship the same God; we honour the same persons, as you. Where, then, is the difference? Our priests wed not; yours may. We receive the Holy Eucharist in one kind; you, in both. We are absolved in private, and make confession thus; you, in public. Be these such mighty differences?”
If Don Juan had thrown a little less dust in her eyes, perhaps Blanche might have had sense enough to ask him where the Church of Rome had found her authority for her half of these differences, since it certainly was not in Holy Scripture: and also, whether that communion held such men as Cranmer, Latimer, Calvin, and Luther, in very high esteem? But the dust was much too thick to allow any stronger reply from Blanche than a feeble inquiry whether these really were all the points of difference.
“What other matter offendeth your Grace? Doubtless I can expound the same.”
“Why, I have heard,” said Blanche faintly, selecting one of the smaller charges first, “that the Papists do hold Mary, the blessed Virgin, to have been without sin.”
“Some Catholics have that fantasy,” replied Don Juan lightly. “It is only a few. The Church binds it not on the conscience of any. You take it—you leave it—as you will.”