On his return home the abbe found me with his niece, who was about my age, and he did not appear to be angry.  I gave him my sermon:  he read it over, and told me that it was a beautiful academical dissertation, but unfit for a sermon from the pulpit, and he added,

“I will give you a sermon written by myself, which I have never delivered; you will commit it to memory, and I promise to let everybody suppose that it is of your own composition.”

“I thank you, very reverend father, but I will preach my own sermon, or none at all.”

“At all events, you shall not preach such a sermon as this in my church.”

“You can talk the matter over with M. de Malipiero.  In the meantime I will take my work to the censorship, and to His Eminence the Patriarch, and if it is not accepted I shall have it printed.”

“All very well, young man.  The patriarch will coincide with me.”

In the evening I related my discussion with the parson before all the guests of M. de Malipiero.  The reading of my sermon was called for, and it was praised by all.  They lauded me for having with proper modesty refrained from quoting the holy fathers of the Church, whom at my age I could not be supposed to have sufficiently studied, and the ladies particularly admired me because there was no Latin in it but the Text from Horace, who, although a great libertine himself, has written very good things.  A niece of the patriarch, who was present that evening, promised to prepare her uncle in my favour, as I had expressed my intention to appeal to him; but M. de Malipiero desired me not to take any steps in the matter until I had seen him on the following day, and I submissively bowed to his wishes.

When I called at his mansion the next day he sent for the priest, who soon made his appearance.  As he knew well what he had been sent for, he immediately launched out into a very long discourse, which I did not interrupt, but the moment he had concluded his list of objections I told him that there could not be two ways to decide the question; that the patriarch would either approve or disapprove my sermon.

“In the first case,” I added, “I can pronounce it in your church, and no responsibility can possibly fall upon your shoulders; in the second, I must, of course, give way.”

The abbe was struck by my determination and he said,

“Do not go to the patriarch; I accept your sermon; I only request you to change your text.  Horace was a villain.”

“Why do you quote Seneca, Tertullian, Origen, and Boethius?  They were all heretics, and must, consequently, be considered by you as worse wretches than Horace, who, after all, never had the chance of becoming a Christian!”