"I am aware of what you would say," pursued the King--"You would say
that the Church--your Church--is the only establishment of the kind
which receives direct inspiration from the Creator of Universes. But I
do not feel justified in limiting the control of the Almighty to one
special orbit of Creed. You tell me that a government system of
education for the people is a purely temporal movement, and that, as
such, it is not blessed by the guidance of God. Yet the Pope seeks
'temporal' power! It is explained to us of course that he seeks it in
order that he may unite it to the spiritual in his own person,--
theoretically for the good of mankind, if practically for the
advancement of his own particular policy. But have you never thought,
Monsignor, that the marked severance of what you call 'temporal' power,
from what you equally call 'spiritual' power, is God's work? Inasmuch
as nothing can be done without God's will; for even if there is a devil
(which I am inclined to doubt) he owes his unhappy existence to God as
much as I do!"

He smiled; but Del Fortis stood rigidly silent, his head bent, and one
hand folded tight across his breast, an attitude Sir Roger de Launay
always viewed in every man with suspicion, as it suggested the
concealment of a weapon.

"You will admit" pursued the King, "that the action of human thought is
always progressive. Unfortunately your Creed lags behind human thought
in its onward march, thus causing the intelligent world to infer that
there must be something wrong with its teaching. For if the Church had
always been in all respects faithful to the teaching of her Divine
Master, she would be at this present time the supreme Conqueror of
Nations. Yet she is doing no more nowadays than she did in the middle