“I hear that Felsenburgh is a Mason,” observed Monsignor Macintosh, the Cathedral Administrator. “A Grand-Master or something.”
“But who is Felsenburgh?” put in a young priest.
Monsignor pursed his lips and shook his head. He was one of those humble persons as proud of ignorance as others of knowledge. He boasted that he never read the papers nor any book except those that had received the imprimatur; it was a priest’s business, he often remarked, to preserve the faith, not to acquire worldly knowledge. Percy had occasionally rather envied his point of view.
“He’s a mystery,” said another priest, Father Blackmore; “but he seems to be causing great excitement. They were selling his ‘Life’ to-day on the Embankment.”
“I met an American senator,” put in Percy, “three days ago, who told me that even there they know nothing of him, except his extraordinary eloquence. He only appeared last year, and seems to have carried everything before him by quite unusual methods. He is a great linguist, too. That is why they took him to Irkutsk.”
“Well, the Masons—-” went on Monsignor. “It is very serious. In the last month four of my penitents have left me because of it.”
“Their inclusion of women was their master-stroke,” growled Father Blackmore, helping himself to claret.
“It is extraordinary that they hesitated so long about that,” observed Percy.
A couple of the others added their evidence. It appeared that they, too, had lost penitents lately through the spread of Masonry. It was rumoured that a Pastoral was a-preparing upstairs on the subject.
Monsignor shook his head ominously.