Francis waits--standing, with his arms raised to
heaven, on fire with an eternal hope, an eternal ecstasy.
"Waits for what?" said Ferrier, under his breath, forgetting his
audience a moment. "The death of Catholicism?"
Sir James Chide gave an uneasy cough. Ferrier, startled, looked round,
threw his old friend a gesture of apology which Sir James mutely
accepted. Then Sir James got up and strolled away, his hands in his
pockets, toward the farther end of the terrace.
The poet meanwhile, ignorant of this little incident, and assuming the
sympathy of his audience, raised his eyebrows, smiling, as he repeated
Ferrier's words:
"The death of Catholicism! No, Signor!--its second birth." And with a
Southern play of hand and feature--the nobility of brow and aspect
turned now on this listener, now on that--he began to describe the
revival of faith in Italy.
"Ten years ago there was not faith enough in this country to make a
heresy! On the one side, a moribund organization, poisoned by a dead
philosophy; on the other, negation, license, weariness--a dumb thirst
for men knew not what. And now!--if St. Francis were here--in every
olive garden--in each hill town--on the roads and the by-ways--on the
mountains--in the plains--his heart would greet the swelling of a new
tide drawing inward to this land--the breath of a new spring kindling
the buds of life.
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