forth into the genial mountain air, like one who had relieved his conscience of a heavy debt.  Like most laymen of the Catholic persuasion, he thought himself no longer bound to maintain a grave and mortified exterior, when worship and penitence were duly observed, and he joined his friend with a cheerfulness of air and voice that an ascetic, or a puritan, might have attributed to levity, after the scenes through which he had so lately passed.

“The Virgin and San Francesco keep thee in mind, old friend!” said the Signor Grimaldi, cordially kissing the two cheeks of the Baron de Willading.  “We both have reason to remember their care, though; heretic as thou art, I doubt not thou hast already found some other mediators to thank, that we now stand on this solid terrace of the Signor de Blonay, instead of being worthless clay at the bottom of yonder treacherous lake.”

“I thank God for this, as for all his mercies—­for thy life, Gaetano, as well as for mine own.”

“Thou art right, thou art right, good Melchior:  ’twas no affair for any but Him who holds the universe in the hollow of his hand, in good faith, for a minute later would have gathered both with our lathers.  Still thou wilt permit me, Catholic as I am, to remember the intercessors on whom I called in the moment of extremity.”

“This is a subject on which we have never agreed, and on which we probably never shall,” answered the Bernese, with somewhat of the reserve of one conscious of a stronger dissidence than he wished to express, as they turned and commenced their walk up and down the terrace, “though I believe it is the only matter of difference that ever existed between us.”

“Is it not extraordinary,” returned the Genoese, “that men should consort together in good and evil, bleed for each other, love each other, do all acts of kindness to each other, as thou and I have done, Melchior, nay, be in the last extremity, and feel more agony for the friend than for one’s self, and yet entertain such opinions of their respective creeds, as to fancy the unbeliever in the devil’s claws all this time, and to entertain a latent distrust that the very soul which, in all other matters, is deemed so noble and excellent, is to be everlastingly damned for the want of certain opinions and formalities that we ourselves have been taught to think essential?”

“To tell thee the truth,” returned the Swiss, rubbing his forehead like a man who wished to brighten up his ideas, as one would brighten old silver, by friction; “this subject, as thou well knowest, is not my strong side.  Luther and Calvin, with other sages, discovered that it was weakness to submit to dogmas, without close examination, merely because they were venerable, and they winnowed the wheat from the chaff.  This we call a reform.  It is enough for me that men so wise were satisfied with their researches and changes, and I feel little inclination to disturb a decision that has now received the sanction of nearly two centuries of practice.  To be plain with thee, I hold it discreet to reverence the opinions of my fathers.”