“Though it would seem not of thy grandfathers,” said the Italian, drily, but in perfect good humor.  “By San Francesco! thou wouldst have made a worthy cardinal, had chance brought thee into the world fifty leagues farther south, or west, or east.  But this is the way with the world, whether it be your Turk, your Hindoo, or your Lutheran, and I fear it is much the same with the children of St. Peter too.  Each has his arguments for faith, or politics, or any interest that may be named, which he uses like a hammer to knock down the bricks of his opponent’s reasons, and when he finds himself in the other’s intrenchments, why he gathers together the scattered materials in order to build a wall for his own protection.  Then what was oppression yesterday is justifiable defence to-day; fanaticism becomes logic; and credulity and pliant submission get, in two centuries, to be deference to the venerable opinion of our fathers!  But let it go—­thou wert speaking of thanking God, and in that; Roman though I am, I fervently and devoutly join with or without saints’ intercession.”

The honest baron did not like his friend’s allusions, though they were much too subtle for his ready comprehension, for the intellect of the Swiss was a little frosted by constant residence among snows and in full view of glaciers, and it wanted the volatile play of the Genoese’s fancy, which was apt to expand like air rarefied by the warmth of the sun.  This difference of temperament, however, so far from lessening their mutual kindness, was, most probably, the real cause of its existence, since it is well known that friendship, like love, is more apt to be generated by qualities that vary a little from our own than by a perfect homogeneity of character and disposition which is more liable to give birth to rivalry and contention, than when each party has some distinct capital of his own on which to adventure, and with which to keep alive the interest of him who, in that particular feature, may be but indifferently provided.  All that is required for a perfect community of feeling is a mutual recognition of, and a common respect for, certain great moral rules, without which there can exist no esteem between the upright.  The alliance of knaves depends on motives so hackneyed and obvious, that we abstain from any illustration of its principle as a work of supererogation.  The Signor Grimaldi and Melchior de Willading were both very upright and justly-minded men, as men go, in intention at least, and their opposite peculiarities and opinions had served, during hot youth, to keep alive the interest of their communications, and were not likely, now that time had mellowed their feelings and brought so many recollections to strengthen the tie, to overturn what they had been originally the principal instruments in creating.

“Of thy readiness to thank God, I have never doubted,” answered the baron, when his friend had ended the remark just recorded, “but we know that his favors are commonly shown to us here below by means of human instruments.  Ought we not, therefore, to manifest another sort of gratitude in favor of the individual who was so serviceable in last night’s gust?”