Cease to strive.  Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline:  hierophantic:  from wide earth an altar.

    Laud we the gods
    and let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
    from our BLESS’D altars.

* * * * * * *

The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S.J. reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps.  Five to three.  Just nice time to walk to Artane.  What was that boy’s name again?  Dignam.  Yes.  Vere DIGNUM et IUSTUM EST. Brother Swan was the person to see.  Mr Cunningham’s letter.  Yes.  Oblige him, if possible.  Good practical catholic:  useful at mission time.

A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches, growled some notes.  He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver crown.

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square.  He thought, but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words:  If I had served my god as I have served my king he would not have abandoned me in my old days.  He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves:  and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.

—­Very well, indeed, father.  And you, father?

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed.  He would go to Buxton probably for the waters.  And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere?  Was that so?  Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that.  And Mr Sheehy himself?  Still in London.  The house was still sitting, to be sure it was.  Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed.  Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach.  O, yes:  a very great success.  A wonderful man really.

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.  Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P.  Yes, he would certainly call.

—­Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun.  And smiled yet again, in going.  He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.

—­Pilate!  Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob?

A zealous man, however.  Really he was.  And really did great good in. his way.  Beyond a doubt.  He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish.  Of good family too would one think it?  Welsh, were they not?