Father Macclesfield'S Tale

Father Meuron was very voluble at supper on the Saturday. He
exclaimed; he threw out his hands; his bright black eyes shone above
his rosy cheeks, and his hair appeared to stand more on end than I had
ever known it.

He sat at the further side of the horse-shoe table from myself, and I
was able to remark on his gaiety to the English priest who sat beside
me without fear of being overheard.

Father Brent smiled.

"He is drunk with la gloire," he said. "He is to tell the story to-
night."

This explained everything.

I did not look forward, however, to his recital. I was confident that
it would be full of tinsel and swooning maidens who ended their days
in convents under Father Meuron's spiritual direction; and when we
came upstairs I found a shadowy corner, a little back from the
semicircle, where I could fall asleep if I wished without provoking
remark.

In fact, I was totally unprepared for the character of his narrative.
When we had all taken our places, and Monsignor's pipe was properly
alight, and himself at full length in his deck chair, the Frenchman
began. He told his story in his own language; but I am venturing to
render it in English as nearly as I am able.

"My contribution to the histories," he began, seated in his upright
arm-chair in the centre of the circle, a little turned away from me---
"my contribution to the histories which these good priests are to
recite is an affair of exorcism. That is a matter with which we who
live in Europe are not familiar in these days. It would seem, I
suppose, that grace has a certain power, accumulating through the
centuries, of saturating even physical objects with its force. However
men may rebel, yet the sacrifices offered and the prayers poured out
have a faculty of holding Satan in check and preventing his more
formidable manifestations. Even in my own poor country at this hour,
in spite of widespread apostasy, in spite even of the deliberate
worship of Satan, yet grace is in the air; and it is seldom indeed
that a priest has to deal with a case of possession. In your
respectable England, too, it is the same; the simple piety of
Protestants has kept alive to some extent the force of the Gospel.
Here in this country of Italy it is somewhat different. The old powers
have survived the Christian assault, and while they cannot live in
Holy Rome, there are corners where they do so."