“You seem to me to have made it out very clearly, Emidio,” said Frank. “Now, what is the good side of this disagreeable picture?”
“The good side is the strength of will and the power of sustained and concentrated thought and purpose. Turn all that in the right direction, and you will find it leads you to a long list of heroic saints, surpassed in no country, and equalled only in Spain, where some of the like characteristics exist.”
“But surely,” said I, “France also is a great land of saints.”
“No doubt. But, generally speaking (of course there are exceptions), they belong to a different category. The greatest contemplatives have been Italian or Spanish.”
“But, Don Emidio, I don't like to think that nationality, which seems to include temperament, and even climate, can have anything to do with the making of God's saints.”
“And why, signorina, should you object to it when He who makes his saints makes also the climate and the temperament? He has linked the outer and inner world too closely together for us to have any reason to be astonished that he should observe certain general laws in connection with the gifts of his highest graces.”
Mary started forward from the depths of her arm-chair, and said eagerly: “Then do you really think that the slower temperament and depressing climate of England, for example, have prevented, and will prevent, our country from being honored by great saints?”
“I am very far from thinking it. On the contrary, and strange as it may appear at first sight, there are certain characteristics amongst the English which assimilate them, in my mind, to the Italians in a way I never could assimilate the French. I allude to your steadiness of purpose and to your reserved and silent habits. These qualities, when laid hold of by grace, tend to lead to contemplation and mystic holiness, much as do the qualities we have spoken of among Italians.”
“Then, I suppose, the extraordinary energy and versatility of the French are likely to make them more active than contemplative.”
“Just so, signorina, and yet there have been wonderful exceptions; and I should be wrong in making out anything like a rigid rule. In the first place, ‘the wind bloweth where it listeth’; [pg 552] and, in the next, the demarcations of national character are not sufficiently strong to necessitate any given development of even mere natural qualities, much less of spiritual qualities.”