‘Your priests should know,’ he said.

To this Patrick thought it well not to reply.  After a pause between them, he referred to the fencing.

‘I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.’

‘You have been to Paris?’

‘I was educated in Paris.’

‘How?  Ah!’ Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of recollection.  ‘I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.’

’The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it education, by courtesy,’ said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown of his host.

‘Then you are accustomed to speak French?’ The interrogation was put to extract some balm from the circumstance.

Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying:  ’All but like a native.’

‘These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils?’

‘They allowed me the privilege of learning, sir.’

After meditation, Mr. Adister said:  ‘You don’t dance?’ He said it speculating on the’ kind of gentleman produced in Paris by the disciples of Loyola.

‘Pardon me, sir, you hit on another of my accomplishments.’

‘These Jesuits encourage dancing?’

‘The square dance—­short of the embracing:  the valse is under interdict.’

Mr. Adister peered into his brows profoundly for a glimpse of the devilry in that exclusion of the valse.

What object had those people in encouraging the young fellow to be a perfect fencer and dancer, so that he should be of the school of the polite world, and yet subservient to them?

‘Thanks to the Jesuits, then, you are almost a Parisian,’ he remarked; provoking the retort: 

’Thanks to them, I’ve stored a little, and Paris is to me as pure a place as four whitewashed walls:’  Patrick added:  ’without a shadow of a monk on them.’  Perhaps it was thrown in for the comfort of mundane ears afflicted sorely, and no point of principle pertained to the slur on a monk.

Mr. Adister could have exclaimed, That shadow of the monk! had he been in an exclamatory mood.  He said:  ‘They have not made a monk of you, then.’

Patrick was minded to explain how that the Jesuits are a religious order exercising worldly weapons.  The lack of precise words admonished him of the virtue of silence, and he retreated—­with a quiet negative:  ’They have not.’

‘Then, you are no Jesuit?’ he was asked.

Thinking it scarcely required a response, he shrugged.

‘You would not change your religion, sir?’ said Mr. Adister in seeming anger.

Patrick thought he would have to rise:  he half fancied himself summoned to change his religion or depart from the house.

‘Not I,’ said he.

‘Not for the title of Prince?’ he was further pressed, and he replied: 

‘I don’t happen to have an ambition for the title of Prince.’

‘Or any title!’ interjected Mr. Adister, ’or whatever the devil can offer!—­or,’ he spoke more pointedly, ’for what fools call a brilliant marriage?’