certain Selva and his wife. Have you been there? Yes? Can you assure me
that your conscience is at rest?"

Don Clemente answered unhesitatingly, but with a movement of surprise:

"Yes, most certainly."

"Well, well, well," said the Abbot, and took a large pinch of snuff with
evident satisfaction. "I do not know these Selvas, but there are people
in Rome who do know them, or, at least, think they do. Signor Selva is
an author, is he not? Has he not written on religion? I fancy he is a
Rosminian, judging by the people who are opposed to him; people unworthy
to tie Rosmini's shoe-strings; but let us discriminate! True Rosminians
are those at Domodossola, and not those who have wives, eh? Very well
then, this evening after supper I received a letter from Rome. They
write me--and you must know my correspondent is one of the mighty--that
precisely to-night a conventicle was to be held at the house of this
false Catholic, Selva, who had summoned to it other malignant insects
like himself; that probably you would wish to be present, and that I was
to prevent your going. I do not know what I should have done, for when
the Holy Father speaks I obey; if the Holy Father does not speak, I
reflect. But, fortunately for you, you had already started. There are
really some good people who will ferret out heretics in Paradise itself!
Now you tell me that your conscience is quiet. Am I not then to believe
what the letter says?"

Don Clemente replied that there had certainly been neither heretics nor
schismatics at Signor Selva's house. They had talked of the Church, of
her ills, and of possible remedies, but in the same spirit in which the
Abbot himself might speak.