Giovanni himself is
past-master at this, but when Giovanni speaks you are impressed above
all, by the immense store of knowledge his mind contains; when Maironi
speaks you feel that the living Christ is in his heart, the risen
Christ, and he fires you! In order to be perfectly, scrupulously
sincere, I will tell you that although I do not think he intends to
convert me, still I am not very sure of this. One day we were in the
olive-grove. He and Giovanni were discussing a German book on the
essence of Christianity, which, it seems, has made a stir, and was
written by a Protestant theologian. Maironi observed that, when this
Protestant speaks of Catholicism, he does so with a most honest
intention of being impartial, but that, in reality, he does not know the
Catholic religion. His opinion is that no Protestant does really know
it; they are all of them full of prejudices, and believe certain
external and remediable abuses in its practices to be essential to
Catholicism. There was a basket of apricots standing near, and he chose
one which had been very fine, but which was beginning to rot.
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