"Yes, if that is God's will."
"Priests are not allowed to marry, and suppose that some day you wanted to take a wife?"
"I shall not want a wife, since God has forbidden it."
"God? But it is the Pope who has forbidden it," said the mother, somewhat taken aback at the boy's answer.
"The Pope is God's representative on earth."
"But in olden times priests had wives and families, just as the Protestant clergy have now," she urged.
"That is a different thing," said the boy, growing warm over the argument; "we ought not to have them!"
"The priests in olden times...." she persisted.
But the sacristan was well-informed. "Yes, the priests in olden times," he said, "but then they themselves held a meeting and decided against it; and those who had no wives or families, the younger ones, were the very ones who opposed marriage the most strongly. That is as it should be."
"The younger ones!" repeated the mother as if to herself. "But they know nothing about it! And then they may repent, they may even go astray," she added in a low voice, "they may come to reason and argue like the old priest."