"One who talks does not know.
One who knows does not talk.
Therefore the sage keeps his mouth shut,
And his sense-gates closed."
Before Father Irwin was questioned, however, there was a delightful interlude.
Some one asked whether it was lawful for any one, not a bishop, to wear a zucchetto during the celebration of Mass. As usual, there was a pleasant diversity of opinion, some contending that the privilege was reserved to the episcopate, inasmuch as the great rubricists only contemplated bishops in laying down the rules for the removal and assumption of the zucchetto; others again maintained that any priest might wear one; and others limited the honor to regulars, who habitually wore the tonsure. The chairman, however, stopped the discussion peremptorily, and again asked (this time a very aged priest) the question he had put to Father Delany. The old man answered promptly:—
"The zucchetto, or pileolus, is removed at the end of the last secret prayer, and resumed after the ablutions."
"Quite right," said the chairman.
"By the way," said the old man, "you pronounce that word pileōlus. The word is pileŏlus."
"The word is pileōlus," said the chairman, whose throne wasn't exactly lined with velvet this day.
"Pardon me. The word is pileŏlus. You find it as such in the scansions of Horace."
"This is your province, Father Dan," said the bishop. "There's no one in the diocese so well qualified to adjudicate here—"