I began thinking what would be the end of it all. The lady became insistent.
"What do you advise? What shall I do? My soul compels me to it."
"My dear friend," I replied, "you know that I am a Protestant—and as a Protestant I am liberally and indulgently inclined towards every other creed. I advise nobody to change his religion, neither do I dissuade him from so doing. I have a real veneration for the Catholic faith. I consider its ritual majestic and sublime, and its ceremonies are undoubtedly imposing and touching. Had I been born a Catholic, I should have been an ardent champion of my Church. But how can I approve of the conversion of a person in your position? Do you not reflect that your husband is an officer of the Calvinist communion?"
"But it is the very prosaic nature of this communion which offends me. For in what a dull manner do our elders and deacons perform their sacred functions! Prayer, sermon, hymns—everything is with them a mere matter of enforced routine. How can they inspire others who have not themselves the gift of grace? Such people can only mock at and speak scornfully of their neighbours' faith because they have no real faith of their own."
"But pray recollect that a Protestant schoolmaster loses his post if his wife changes her religion."
"He may lose his material comforts, but I lose the repose of my soul."
"My dear Bessy, I can imagine that a woman with extraordinarily sensitive nerves may find no consolation in Puritan simplicity. If you would seek refuge in true devotion, procure Allach's prayer-book—the manual of Catholic prayers, you know. In that book you'll find everything that is sublime, majestic, and heavenly in Catholic theology. Pray out of that book when you are alone and nobody sees you."
"That is not enough for me. Religion does not consist in prayers and singing alone."
"Then perhaps it is the pomp of the external ceremonies which has such an effect on your mind?"
"That affects me least of all. But there is in the Catholic Church an institution as sublime as it is comforting, an institution sufficient of itself to spread the Catholic religion all over the round world wherever there are hearts that bleed, wherever there are those who suffer from other than merely material aches and pains. That institution is confession. It was a gross blunder of John Calvin not to have retained that institution for the faithful. He did not know the heart, especially the female heart. There is no greater torture in this world than to carry about in one's soul night and day an evil thought which harasses and pursues, and be unable to tell it to anybody. A Catholic woman can always find a word of consolation for her despair, a hand stretched out to raise her when she falls; she has a refuge against the accusations of her own conscience; if she has sinned, she can beg for absolution, and her soul is lightened of its load. But who can absolve me? To whom can I tell that which tortures me within?"