"Isn't that simply delicious?" said Father Letheby, laying down the review, and challenging my admiration.
"Poor fellow," I could not help saying; "the last little bit of pathos about his children gilds the wretched picture. Who was he?"
"No less a person than Dr. Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford, and the originator of the Tractarian Movement. But can you conceive a Catholic priest writing such a letter?"
"No," I replied slowly, "I cannot. But I can conceive a Catholic priest thinking it. I am not so much unlike the rest of mankind; and I remember when I came out on the mission, and had time to look around me, like a chicken just out of its shell, two things gave me a shock of intense surprise. First, I could not conceive how the Catholic Church had got on for eighteen hundred years without my cooperation and ability; and, secondly, I could not understand what fatuity possessed the Bishop to appoint as his vicar-general a feeble old man of seventy, who preached with hesitation, and, it was whispered, believed the world was flat, and that people were only joking when they spoke of it as a globe; and pass over such a paragon of perfection, an epitome of all the talents, like myself. It took me many years to recover from that surprise; and, alas! a little trace of it lingers yet. Believe me, my dear young friend, a good many of us are as alien in spirit to the Imitation as Dr. Lloyd, but we must not say it."
"By Jove!" he said, "I thought there was but one other Dr. Lloyd in the world, and that was Father James——," mentioning the name of my morning visitor.
It was the first chink I had seen in the armor of my young Goliath, and I put in my rapier.
"You are not very busy?" I said.
"No, Father," he replied, surprised.
"Would you have time to listen to a little story?"
"Certainly," he said, settling back in his chair, his head on his hands.