the solemn barges opposite with all that that dignity meant; above all as he looked down that immeasurable line, that roadway of a god, along which presently at least the Vicar of a God should come—­all this and a thousand memories more—­memories of events such as few experience in a lifetime, crowded into twelve months—­passed in endless defile, coherent and consistent at last under the pointing finger of Him who had directed and evolved them all.

* * * * *

First, then, he saw himself, a child in knowledge, beginning life at a point where many leave it off, plunged into a world that was wholly strange and bewildering, a world which, though Christian in name, seemed brutal in nature—­brutal as the pagan empires were brutal, yet without the excuse of their ignorance and passion.

Yet his intellect had seemed unable to refute the conclusion of that march of events, that coherence of all ideals in a reasoned whole, that fulfilment of instincts, that play of forces, upon which, as upon a tide, Catholicism had floated to final victory in the history of mankind.  Not one element had seemed wanting; and, as if to convince by sensible visions that brain which shrank from merely argued logic, one by one he had seen for himself as in a picture lesson, how at Versailles the social tangle of an individual kingdom had once more submitted to monarchy—­that faulty mirror of the Divine government of the world; how at Rome the stability of rival kingdoms, had found itself once more in an arbiter whose kingdom was not of this world; how finally, at Lourdes, in the widest circle of all, the very science of the world itself had found itself not confronted or opposed, but welcomed and transcended, by a school of thinkers whose limitations lay only in the Infinite.

Once more then he had returned.  Yet he had found that the head and the imagination are not all; that man has a heart as well; and that this has its demands no less inexorable that those of intellect.  And it was this heart of his that had seemed outraged and silenced.  For he had found in Christianity a synthesis of ideas—­a coincidence of knowledge—­which, while satisfying that head, emerged in a system to which his heart could be no party.  He had learned that “Christian society must protect itself”; and he had seemed in this to find a denial of the essential Christian doctrine that success comes only by defeat, and triumph by the Cross.  It had seemed to him that Christ had accepted the taunts at last, had come down from the Cross and won the homage only of those who did not understand Him.  He had been quieted indeed for a time, under the power of men who, whatever the rest of the world might do, still thought that suffering was the better part.  Yet he had been quieted; not convinced.

Then he had sought a glimpse of the reverse of the picture—­of that which now seemed the sole alternative to that faith which he feared—­a glimpse only; yet full of significance.  For he had seen men to whom the better part of themselves seemed nothing; men who walked with downcast eyes, piling mud and stones together, and fancying the heap to be a very City of God.