Not thus did we approach the Scarlet Woman in the ’fifties.  We palliated nothing, we believed in no good intentions, we used (I myself used, in my tender innocency) language of the seventeenth century such as is now no longer introduced into any species of controversy.  As a little boy, when I thought, with intense vagueness, of the Pope, I used to shut my eyes tight and clench my fists.  We welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy.  If there was a custom-house officer stabbed in a fracas at Sassari, we gave loud thanks that liberty and light were breaking in upon Sardinia.  If there was an unsuccessful attempt to murder the Grand Duke, we lifted up our voices to celebrate the faith and sufferings of the dear persecuted Tuscans, and the record of some apocryphal monstrosity in Naples would only reveal to us a glorious opening for Gospel energy.  My Father celebrated the announcement in the newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal Dominions by rejoicing at ’this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot’s domain, from her sins and her plagues’.

No, the Protestant League may consider itself to be an earnest and active body, but I can never look upon its efforts as anything but lukewarm, standing, as I do, with the light of other days around me.  As a child, whatever I might question, I never doubted the turpitude of Rome.  I do not think I had formed any idea whatever of the character or pretensions or practices of the Catholic Church, or indeed of what it consisted, or its nature; but I regarded it with a vague terror as a wild beast, the only good point about it being that it was very old and was soon to die.  When I turned to Jukes or Newton for further detail, I could not understand what they said.  Perhaps, on the whole, there was no disadvantage in that.

It is possible that someone may have observed to my Father that the conditions of our life were unfavourable to our health, although I hardly think that he would have encouraged any such advice.  As I look back upon this far-away time, I am surprised at the absence in it of any figures but our own.  He and I together, now in the study among the sea-anemones and starfishes; now on the canal-bridge, looking down at the ducks; now at our hard little meals, served up as those of a dreamy widower are likely to be when one maid-of-all-work provides them, now under the lamp at the maps we both loved so much, this is what I see—­no third presence is ever with us.  Whether it occurred to himself that such a solitude a deux was excellent, in the long run, for neither of us, or whether any chance visitor or one of the ‘Saints’, who used to see me at the Room every Sunday morning, suggested that a female influence might put a little rose-colour into my pasty cheeks, I know not.  All I am sure of is that one day, towards the close of the summer, as I was gazing into the street, I saw a four-wheeled cab stop outside our door, and deposit, with several packages, a strange lady, who was shown up into my Father’s study and was presently brought down and introduced to me.