men were altogether barbarous before the coming of Christ. They were
cruel and unjust certainly,--and alas! they are cruel and unjust
still! Eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching have not
eradicated these ingrained sins from any one unit of the entire
mass."

"You are a severe judge!" said the Archbishop.

Cardinal Bonpre lifted his mild blue eyes protestingly.

"Severe? I? God forbid that I should be severe, or presume to sit in
judgment on any poor soul that sought my sympathy! I do not judge,--
I simply feel. And my feelings have for a long time, I confess, been
poignantly sorrowful."

"Sorrowful! And why?"

"Because the impression has steadily gained upon me that if our
Church were all it was originally intended to be by its Divine
Founder, we should at this time have neither heresies or apostasies,
and all the world would be gathered into the 'one fold under one
Shepherd.' But if we, who are its ministers, persist in occupying
ourselves more with 'things temporal' than 'things spiritual,' we
fail to perform our mission, or to show the example required of us,
and we do not attract, so much as we repel. The very children of the
present day are beginning to doubt our calling and election."

"Oh, of course there are, and always have been heretics and
atheists," said the Archbishop,--"And apparently there always will
be."