"This is comfort—no cold can penetrate these walls; they are double plastered. Credit limestone with that!"
The audience showed its appreciation in no uncertain way.
"The crystal—can any one see that—find that in this interior?"
The men were silent. Father Honoré was pointing to the mother and her child; the father was holding out his arms to the little one who, with loving impatience, was reaching away from his mother over the table to his father. They comprehended the priest's thought in the lesson of the limestone:—the love and trust of the human. No words were needed. An emotional silence made itself felt.
The picture shifted. There was thrown upon the screen the marble Cathedral of Milan. A murmur of delight ran through the house.
"Here we have the limestone in the form of marble. Its beauty is the price of unremitting toil. This, too, belongs in the brotherhoods of labor, kin, and equality.—Do you find the crystal?"
His pointer swept the hierarchy of statues on the roof, upwards to the cross on the pinnacle, where it rested.
"This crystal is the symbol of what inspires and glorifies humanity. The crystal is yours, men, if with believing hearts you are willing to say 'Our Father' in the face of His works."
He paused a moment. It was an understood thing in the semi-monthly talks, that the men were free to ask questions and to express an opinion, even, at times, to argue a point. The men's eyes were fixed with keen appreciation on the marble beauty before them, when a voice broke the silence.
"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about 'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere—and no offence meant."