“Certainly,” replied the abbe, gravely. The worthy man, who cherished his niece, always allowed her to tear him from his meditations with angelic patience.
“Then if I remain unmarried,—supposing that I do,—God wills it?”
“Yes, my child,” replied the abbe.
“And yet, as nothing prevents me from marrying to-morrow if I choose, His will can be destroyed by mine?”
“That would be true if we knew what was really the will of God,” replied the former prior of the Sorbonne. “Observe, my daughter, that you put in an if.”
The poor woman, who expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists in turning from answer to question,—a logic that is frequently embarrassing.
“But, uncle, God did not make women intending them not to marry; otherwise they ought all to stay unmarried; if not, they ought all to marry. There’s great injustice in the distribution of parts.”
“Daughter,” said the worthy abbe, “you are blaming the Church, which declares celibacy to be the better way to God.”
“But if the Church is right, and all the world were good Catholics, wouldn’t the human race come to an end, uncle?”
“You have too much mind, Rose; you don’t need so much to be happy.”