Monsignor was dumb with sheer amazement, and a consciousness that he had been baffled.  He felt he had been intellectually tricked; and he felt it an additional outrage that he had been tricked by this young monk with whom he had come to sympathize.

“But the death penalty!” he cried.  “Death! that is the horror.  I understand a spiritual penalty for a spiritual crime—­but a physical one. . . .”

Dom Adrian smiled a little wearily.

“My dear Monsignor,” he said, “I thought I had explained that it was for a crime against society.  I am not put to death for my opinions; but because, holding those opinions, which are declared heretical, and refusing to submit to an authoritative decision, I am an enemy of the civil state which is upheld solely by the sanctions of Catholicism.  Remember it is not the Church that puts me to death.  That is not her affair.  She is a spiritual society.”

“But death! death, anyhow!”

The man’s face grew grave and tender.

“Is that so dreadful,” he said, “to a convinced Catholic?”

Monsignor rose to his feet.  It seemed to him that his whole moral sense was in danger.  He made his last appeal.

“But Christ!” he cried; “Jesus Christ!  Can you conceive that gentle Lord of ours tolerating all this for one instant!  I cannot answer you now; though I am convinced there is an answer.  But is it conceivable that He who said, ‘Resist not evil,’ that He who Himself was dumb before his murderers——­”

Dom Adrian rose too.  An extraordinary intensity came into his eyes, and his face grew paler still.  He began in a low voice, but as he ended his voice rang aloud in the little room.

“It is you who are dishonouring our Lord,” he said.  “Certainly He suffered, as we Catholics too can suffer, as you shall see one day—­as you have seen a thousand times already, if you know anything of the past.  But is that all that He is? . . .  Is He just the Prince of Martyrs, the supreme Pain-bearer, the silent Lamb of God?  Have you never heard of the wrath of the Lamb? of the eyes that are as a flame of fire? of the rod of iron with which He breaks in pieces the kings of the earth? . . .  The Christ you appeal to is nothing.  It is but the failure of a Man with the Divinity left out . . . the Prince of sentimentalists, and of that evil old religion that once dared to call itself Christianity.  But the Christ we worship is more than that—­the Eternal Word of God, the Rider on the White Horse, conquering and to conquer....  Monsignor, you forget of what Church you are a priest!  It is the Church of Him who refused the kingdoms of this world from Satan, that He might win them for Him self.  He has done so! Christ reigns! . . .  Monsignor, that is what you have forgotten!  Christ is no longer an opinion or a theory.  He is a Fact. Christ reigns! He actually rules this world.  And the world knows it.”

He paused for one second, shaking with his own passion.  Then he flung out his hands.