“Not so!” the priest thundered suddenly, and his eyes blazed far back in his skull. “We have mortified this our body which is from the devil, and in the lowness of the tides of this life we see the truth. For I tell you that when we see this place to be lonely, then, indeed, we see the truth, and when we say that it is pleasant, we lie foully.”
“Then, indeed,” Robert Grimshaw said, “we—I mean you and I—are to be creatures of two natures. We shall follow our passions—if they be passions of well-doing—till they lead us, as always they must, into evil.”
“And,” the priest assented, “we must purge then from us that satisfaction of well-doing and well-being by abstentions and by fastings, and by thinking of the things that are not of this world.”
“It is strange,” Robert Grimshaw said, “to hear your conversation. I have heard so little of these things since I was a very young man. But you teach me now as my aunt and foster-mother taught me at her knee. She was Mrs. Peter Lascarides.”
“I knew her,” the priest said. “She was a very good woman. You could not have had a better teacher.”
“And yet,” Robert Grimshaw said, “it was from her teaching that I have evolved what has been the guiding phrase of my life: ‘Do what you want and take what you get for it.’”
“And God in His mercy pardon the ill we do.” The priest crossed himself.
“I had forgotten that,” Grimshaw said, and he added gravely: “God in His mercy pardon the ill I have done.”
“May it be pardoned to you,” the priest said. He stopped for a moment to let the prayer ascend to Heaven. Then he added didactically: “With that addition your motto is a very good one; for, with a good training, a man should have few evil instincts. And to do what you want, unless obviously it is evil, is to follow the dictates of the instincts that God has placed in you. Thus, if you will feast, feast; if you will fast, fast; if you will be charitable to your neighbour, pour out your goods into the outstretched hands of the poor. Then, if you chance to give three scudi into the hands of a robber, and with these three scudi he purchase a knife wherewith he slay his brother, God may well pardon it to you, who hung, omnipotent, upon the Cross, though thereby to Cæsar was left power to oppress many of the Churches.”
“So that we should not think too much of the effects of our deeds?” Robert Grimshaw asked.