"Father," he said, "it's exactly as I told you before lunch. I'll promise to tell you if my memory comes back. At present I remember practically nothing at all, except instinctively. All I know is that this story we have heard simply astounds me. I had a sort of idea that Christianity was ebbing from the world; that most thinking men had given up all belief in it; and now I find it's exactly the other way. Please treat me as if I had stepped straight out of the beginning of the century. Just tell me the facts as if for the first time. Is it really true that practically the whole world is Christian?"
The priest hesitated.
"You mean that, Monsignor?"
"Certainly."
"Very well, then." He paused again. "But it's extraordinarily hard to know where to begin."
"Begin anywhere. It's all new to me."
"Very good. Well, yes: roughly we may say that the world is Christian, in the same sort of way, at least, in which Europe was Christian, say in the twelfth century. There are survivals, of course, particularly in the East, where large districts still cling to their old superstitions; and there are even eminent men here and there who are not explicitly Catholics; but, as a whole, the world is Christian."
"Do you mean Catholic?"
The priest stared a moment.
"Why, yes. What else—-?"