And a great desire came on the Christian people to tell the truth
of Christ to the strange and foreign peoples of the world. So that
every day out of Jerusalem you would see friars hitting the road,
some of them to confront the wizards of the Land of Darkness, and
some to argue theology with the old lamas of Tibet, and some to
convert the sunny Southern islands, where the young women do be
letting down their hair and the men do be forgetting God for them.
And all over the world there was spreading a great rumor that the
truth of all things was at last known.

Even Kubla Khan had heard of it far off in China, and he had charged
the uncle and father of Marco with a message to the Pope of Rome.
Let the pope be sending some theologians to his court, and they'd
argue the matter out; and if he was satisfied that this new religion
was the True Religion, then he'd turn Christian and tell his people
to turn Christian, too. And let them be bringing back some of the
Oil of the Lamp which burns in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem and
is a cure for all the ills in the world.

And when they came to the City of Acre, sure the pope was dead.
And they waited a long time, but no new pope was chosen, so they
decided to go back, because they had a good business there, and
they didn't want to lose it. And yet they knew there'd be trouble
with the Grand Khan, if they didn't bring back the news of the True
Religion and people to argue it.

"I've been a long time trading," says Nicolo, and it's a queer thing,
but the more trading you do, the less religion you have. The arguing
of religion would not come easy to me. And I'd be up against experts.
I'm not the man for it," says he. "How about you, Matthew?"