He did not answer. In fact, with the ceasing of the fifteen minutes’ ringing the storm ceased, and there was left only a low growling of spent thunders about the horizon, and a flutter of pallid light now and then. It was only the next morning at the breakfast-table that Mr. Vane thought to remark that the bell-ringer of the basilica must be a pretty good meteorologist, for he knew just when to strike in after the last great clap.
“It was a most beautiful incident,” Bianca said seriously. “Please do not turn it into ridicule, papa!”
They were just rising from the table, and, in speaking, the daughter put her arm around her father’s shoulder and kissed him, as if she would assure him of her loving respect in all that was human, even while reproving him from the height of a superior spiritual wisdom.
The father had been wont to receive these soft admonitions affectionately, indeed, but somewhat lightly. Lately, however, he had
taken them in a more serious manner. Perhaps the presence of the Signora, whose sentiments in such matters he could not regard as childish, and whose displeasure he could not look upon with the natural superiority of a father, put him a little more on his guard. He glanced at her now, biting his lip; but she did not seem to have heard.
“May not the effect bell-ringing has on tempests be accounted for on natural principles?” Isabel asked, with the air of one making a philosophical discovery.
“My dear Isabel, it is said that the miracles of Christ may be so accounted for,” the Signora replied. “But who is to account for the natural principles? We have no time to spare,” she added brightly. “The train starts in fifteen minutes. Hurry, children!”
But, brightly as she spoke, a slight cloud settled over her feelings after this little incident. She was not displeased with Mr. Vane; for she had learned that no real irreverence underlay these occasional gibes, and had observed that they grew more rare, and were rather the effect of habit than of intention. She was grateful to him, indeed, for the delicacy and consideration he showed, and for the patience with which he submitted himself to a Catholic atmosphere and mode of life which did not touch his convictions, though it might not have been foreign to his tastes.
“We are frequently as unjust to Protestants as they are to us,” she constantly said to her over-zealous friends. “If they are sincere in their disbelief, it would show a lack of principle in them to be over-indulgent and complacent to us. You must recollect that many a Protestant cannot help believing us guilty of something like, at least,
unconscious idolatry; cannot help having a sort of horror for some of our ways. Besides, we must not claim merit to ourselves for having faith. ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.’ Then, again, here is an inquiry worth making: Look about among your Catholic acquaintances, including yourself among them, and ask, from your knowledge of them and of yourself, ‘If the drama of salvation were yet to be acted, and Christ were but just come on earth, poor, humble, and despised, how many of these people would follow him? Would I follow him? What instance of a sacrifice of worldly advantages, a giving up of friends and happiness, a willingness to be despised for God’s sake, have I or any of these given?’ It is easy, it is a little flattering, indeed, to one’s vanity, and pleasing to one’s imagination, to stand in very good company, among people many of whom are our superiors in rank and reputation, and have our opponents fire their poor little arrows at us. We feel ourselves very great heroes and heroines indeed, when, in truth, we are no more than stage heroes, with tinsel crowns and tin swords, and would fly affrighted before a real trial. It is easy to talk, and those who do the least talk the most and the most positively. Some of the noblest natures in the world are outside of the fold, some of the meanest are inside. God’s ways are not our ways, and we cannot disentangle these things. Only we should not take airs to ourselves. When I see the primitive ardor and nobleness of Christianity in a person, I hold that person as independent of circumstances, and am sure that he would join the company of the fishermen to-day, if they were but just called. The