"I'm a little afraid, Monsieur Rule," he answered, "that in France you have entered the rope of republicanism at the wrong end. In Ameriky, we even put religion before dollars; and if that isn't convincing I'll give it up. Now, I do wish you could see a Sunday once in the Granite State, Signorina Ghita, that you might get some notion what our western religion ra'ally is."
"All real religion--all real devotion to God--is, or ought to be, the same, Signor Ithuello, whether in the east or in the west. A Christian is a Christian, let him live or die where he may."
"That's not exactly platform, I fancy. Why, Lord bless ye, young lady, _your_ religion, now, is no more like _mine_ than my religion is like that of the Archbishop of Canterbury's, or Monsieur Rule's, here!"
"_La mienne_!" exclaimed Raoul--"I pretend to none, _mon brave_; there can be no likeness to nothing."
Ghita's glance was kind, rather than reproachful; but it was profoundly sorrowful.
"In what can our religion differ," she asked, "if we are both Christians? Americans or Italians, it is all the same."
"That comes of knowing nothing about Ameriky," said Ithuel, filled with the conceit of his own opinion of himself and of the part of the world from which he came. "In the first place, you have a Pope and cardinals and bishops and all such things in your religion, while we have none."
"Certainly, there is the Holy Father, and there are cardinals; but they are not my religion," answered Ghita, looking surprised. "Bishops, it is true, are appointed of God and form part of his church; and the bishop of Rome is the head of the church on earth, but nothing more!"
"Nothing more! Don't you worship images, and take off and put on garments at your prayers, and kneel down in a make-believe, profane way: and don't you turn everything into vain ceremonies?"
Had Ithuel been engaged, body and soul, in maintaining one of the propositions of the Oxford Tracts' controversy, he could not have uttered these words with greater zeal or with a more self-righteous emotion. His mind was stored with the most vulgar accusations of an exceedingly vulgar set of sectarian distinctions; and he fancied it a high proof of Protestant perfection to hold all the discarded usages in abhorrence. On the other hand, Ghita listened with surprise; for, to her, the estimation in which the rites of the Roman church are held by the great bulk of Protestants was a profound secret. The idea of worshipping an image never crossed her innocent mind; and although she often knelt before her own little ivory crucifix, she had never supposed any could be so ignorant as to confound the mere material representation of the sacrifice it was meant to portray with the divine expiation itself.