—­The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches in twenty minutes,—­money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.

I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir!  Now, what’s the use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can’t have the things themselves, Sir?  What’s the use of painting the fire round a poor fellow, when you think it won’t do to kindle one under him,—­as they did at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was?

—­What story is that?—­I said.

Why,—­he answered,—­at the last auto-da-fe, in 1824 or ’5, or somewhere there,—­it’s a traveller’s story, but a mighty knowing traveller he is,—­they had a “heretic” to use up according to the statutes provided for the crime of private opinion.  They couldn’t quite make up their minds to burn him, so they only hung him in a hogshead painted all over with flames!

No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box and vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir!  It won’t be long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have Americanized government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into the world will be good in the face of all men for just so much of His “inspiration” as “giveth him understanding"!—­None of my words, Sir! none of my words!

—­If Iris does not love this little gentleman, what does love look like when one sees it?  She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,—­

    That all her features were resigned
    To this sole image in her mind.

But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he says anything about the soul and the soul’s atmosphere, religion.

Women are twice as religious as men;—­all the world knows that.  Whether they are any better, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of praise or blame.  But in all common aspects they are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,—­from their teachings, from their example,—­above all, from their pure affections.

Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.  Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,—­which every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children, to say the least.  I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.