“I have indeed no conception of it,” said I; “I have an abhorrence of idolatry—­the idea of bowing before a graven figure.”

“The idea, indeed,” said Belle, who had now joined us.

“Did you never bow before that of Shakespeare?” said the man in black, addressing himself to me, after a low bow to Belle.

“I don’t remember that I ever did,” said I, “but even suppose I did?”

“Suppose you did,” said the man in black; “shame on you, Mr. Hater of Idolatry; why, the very supposition brings you to the ground; you must make figures of Shakespeare, must you? then why not of St. Antonio, or Ignacio, or of a greater personage still?  I know what you are going to say,” he cried, interrupting me as I was about to speak.  “You don’t make his image in order to pay it divine honours, but only to look at it, and think of Shakespeare; but this looking at a thing in order to think of a person is the very basis of idolatry.  Shakespeare’s works are not sufficient for you; no more are the Bible or the legend of Saint Antony or Saint Ignacio for us, that is for those of us who believe in them; I tell you, Zingaro, that no religion can exist long which rejects a good bodily image.”

“Do you think,” said I, “that Shakespeare’s works would not exist without his image?”

“I believe,” said the man in black, “that Shakespeare’s image is looked at more than his works, and will be looked at, and perhaps adored, when they are forgotten.  I am surprised that they have not been forgotten long ago; I am no admirer of them.”

“But I can’t imagine,” said I, “how you will put aside the authority of Moses.  If Moses strove against image-worship, should not his doing so be conclusive as to the impropriety of the practice; what higher authority can you have than that of Moses?”

“The practice of the great majority of the human race,” said the man in black, “and the recurrence to image-worship, where image-worship has been abolished.  Do you know that Moses is considered by the church as no better than a heretic, and though, for particular reasons, it has been obliged to adopt his writings, the adoption was merely a sham one, as it never paid the slightest attention to them?  No, no, the church was never led by Moses, nor by one mightier than he, whose doctrine it has equally nullified—­I allude to Krishna in his second avatar; the church, it is true, governs in his name, but not unfrequently gives him the lie, if he happens to have said anything which it dislikes.  Did you never hear the reply which Padre Paolo Segani made to the French Protestant Jean Anthoine Guerin, who had asked him whether it was easier for Christ to have been mistaken in his Gospel, than for the Pope to be mistaken in his decrees?”

“I never heard their names before,” said I.

“The answer was pat,” said the man in black, “though he who made it was confessedly the most ignorant fellow of the very ignorant order to which he belonged, the Augustine.  ‘Christ might err as a man,’ said he, ’but the Pope can never err, being God.’  The whole story is related in the Nipotismo.”