can live on bread and herbs and water.  I want no luxurious surroundings,—­no softnesses—­no delicacies—­no tendernesses—­no sympathies!  I set my face forward in the teeth of a thousand winds of opposition, forward still forward!  I seek nothing for my own personal needs!  I know that nothing can hinder me or keep me back!  Nothing!  Monseigneur, I voice the cry of multitudes!—­they have, as it were, been wandering in the wilderness listening to the Gospel for many days,—­days which have accumulated to more than eighteen hundred years; just as they did of old,—­only the Master did not send them away hungry—­He fed them lest they should ’faint by the way.’  He thought of that possibility!—­we seldom care how many faint by the way, or die in the effort to live!  Monseigneur, I must—­I will speak for the dumb mouths of the nations!  And every unit that can so speak, or can so write, should hasten to turn itself into a Pentecostal flame of fire to blaze and burn a warning upon the verge of this new century,—­causing men to prophesy with divers tongues, of the Truth of God,—­not of the lies that have been made to represent Him!”

Felix Bonpre raised one hand with a slight gesture enjoining silence, and seemed wrapped for a moment in painful meditation.  Angela looking anxiously up at him caught, not his glance, but that of Manuel, who smiled at her encouragingly.  Presently the Cardinal spoke,—­gently and with a kind of austere patience.

“Am I to understand from your speech, my son, and the work of your life, that you consider the Church a lie?  I put the question plainly; but I do not ask it either to reproach or intimidate you.  I am well aware I can do neither.  Thought is free to the individual as well as to the nations; and whereas, in past time we had one man who could think and speak, we have now a thousand!  We are unfortunately apt to forget the spread of education;—­but a man who thinks as you do, and dares all things for the right to act upon his thought, should surely be able to clearly explain his reasons for arming himself against any outwardly expressed form of faith, which has received the acceptance and submission of the world?”

“Monseigneur, I do not attack any faith!  Faith is necessary,—­faith is superb!  I honour this uplifting virtue,—­whether I find it in the followers of the Talmud or the Koran, or the New Testament, and, personally speaking, I would die for my belief in the great name and ethical teaching of Christ.  I attack the Church—­yes,—­and why?  Because it has departed from the Faith!  Because it is a mere system now,—­corrupt in many parts, as all systems must naturally become when worn out by long usage.  In many ways it favours stupid idolatries, and in others it remains deaf and blind and impervious to the approach of great spiritual and religious facts, which are being made splendidly manifest by Science.  Why, there is not a miracle in the Testament that science will not make possible!—­there