“Yes, they're a forbidden luxury. But you—? Are you superstitious? Would you be afraid of opals?”
“I doubt if I should have the courage to wear one. At all events, I don't regard superstitions in the light of a luxury. I should be glad to be rid of those I have. They're a horrible inconvenience. But I can't get it out of my head that the air is filled with a swarm of malignant little devils, who are always watching their chance to do us an ill turn. We don't in the least know the conditions under which they can bring it off; but it's legendary that if we wear opals, or sit thirteen at table, or start an enterprise on Friday, or what not, we somehow give them their opportunity. And one naturally wishes to be on the safe side.”
She looked at him with doubt, considering.
“You don't seriously believe all that?” she said.
“No, I don't seriously believe it. But one breathes it in with the air of one's nursery, and it sticks. I don't believe it, but I fear it just enough to be made uneasy. The evil eye, for instance. How can one spend any time in Italy, where everybody goes loaded with charms against it, and help having a sort of sneaking half-belief in the evil eye?”
She shook her head, laughing.
“I 've spent a good deal of time in Italy, but I have n't so much as a sneaking quarter-belief in it.”
“I envy you your strength of mind,” said he. “But surely, though superstition is a luxury forbidden to Catholics, there are plenty of good Catholics who indulge in it, all the same?”
“There are never plenty of good Catholics,” said sire. “You employ a much-abused expression. To profess the Catholic faith, to go to Mass on Sunday and abstain from meat on Friday, that is by no means sufficient to constitute a good Catholic. To be a good Catholic one would have to be a saint, nothing less—and not a mere formal saint, either, but a very real saint, a saint in thought and feeling, as well as in speech and action. Just in so far as one is superstitious, one is a bad Catholic. Oh, if the world were populated by good Catholics, it would be the Millennium come to pass.”
“It would be that, if it were populated by good Christians—wouldn't it?” asked Peter.