To return, however, to Calonico. The _curato_ was very kind to me. We
had long talks together. I could see it pained him that I was not a
Catholic. He could never quite get over this, but he was very good and
tolerant. He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those
English who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people.
This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do; and when I
told him so, he viewed me with sorrow but henceforth without alarm.
All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a
Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant ones.
Surely there are some things which like politics are too serious to be
taken quite seriously. _Surtout point de zele_ is not the saying of a
cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and the more deep our
feeling is about any matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard
against _zele_ in this particular respect. There is but one step from
the "earnest" to the "intense." When St. Paul told us to be all things
to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say
how far it was to be driven.
I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I
flirt just a trifle too much with "_il partito nero_," when I am in
Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do.
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