"Certainly it could not have been any application to yourself," said the curate, politely.
"How do you mean, sir?" cried Bramleigh, almost fiercely. "How do you mean?"
"I mean, sir, that few men have less cause for discontent with fortune."
"How can _you_--how can any man, presume to say that of another!" said Bramleigh, in a loud and defiant tone, as he arose and paced the room. "Who can tell what passes in his neighbor's house, still less in his heart or his head? What do I know, as I listen to your discourse on a Sunday, of the terrible conflict of doubts that have beset you during the week--heresies that have swarmed around you like the vipers and hideous reptiles that gathered around St. Anthony, and that, banished in one shape, came back in another? How do I know what compromises you may have made with your conscience before you come to utter to me your eternal truths; and how you may have said, 'If he can believe all this, so much the better for him'--eh?"
He turned fiercely round, as if to demand an answer; and the curate modestly said, "I hope it is not so that men preach the gospel."
"And yet many must preach in that fashion," said Bramleigh, with a deep but subdued earnestness. "I take it that no man's convictions are without a flaw somewhere, and it is not by parading that flaw he will make converts."
L'Estrange did not feel disposed to follow him into this thesis, and sat silent and motionless.
"I suppose," muttered Bramleigh, as he folded his arms and walked the room with slow steps, "it's all expediency,--all! We do the best we can, and hope it may be enough. You are a good man, L'Estrange--"
"Far from it, sir. I feel, and feel very bitterly, too, my own unworthiness," said the curate, with an intense sincerity of voice.
"I think you so far good that you are not worldly. You would not do a mean thing, an ignoble, a dishonest thing; you would n't take what was not your own, nor defraud another of what was his,--would you?"
"And yet that is saying a great deal. I may have my doubts whether that penknife be mine or not. Some one may come to-morrow or next day to claim it as his, and describe it, Heaven knows how rightly or wrongly. No matter, he 'll say he owns it. Would you, sir,--I ask you now simply as a Christian man, I am not speaking to a casuist or a lawyer,--would you, sir, at once, just as a measure of peace to your own conscience, say, 'Let him take,' rather than burden your heart with a discussion for which you had no temper nor taste? That's the question I 'd like to ask you. Can you answer it? I see you cannot," cried he, rapidly. "I see at once how you want to go off into a thousand subtleties, and instead of resolving my one doubt, surround me with a legion of others."