and asking him how a person could be omnipotent who could not always preserve himself from poison, even when fenced round by nephews, or protected by a bustling woman, he, after taking a long sip of hollands and water, told me that I must not expect too much from omnipotence; for example, that as it would be unreasonable to expect that One above could annihilate the past—­for instance, the Seven Years’ War, or the French Revolution—­though any one who believed in Him would acknowledge Him to be omnipotent, so would it be unreasonable for the faithful to expect that the Pope could always guard himself from poison.  Then, after looking at me for a moment stedfastly, and taking another sip, he told me that popes had frequently done impossibilities; for example, Innocent the Tenth had created a nephew; for, not liking particularly any of his real nephews, he had created the said Camillo Astalli his nephew; asking me, with a he! he!  “What but omnipotence could make a young man nephew to a person to whom he was not in the slightest degree related?” On my observing that of course no one believed that the young fellow was really the Pope’s nephew, though the Pope might have adopted him as such, the man in black replied, “that the reality of the nephewship of Camillo Astalli had hitherto never become a point of faith; let, however, the present pope, or any other pope, proclaim that it is necessary to believe in the reality of the nephewship of Camillo Astalli, and see whether the faithful would not believe in it.  Who can doubt that,” he added, “seeing that they believe in the reality of the five propositions of Jansenius?  The Jesuits, wishing to ruin the Jansenists, induced a pope to declare that such and such damnable opinions, which they called five propositions, were to be found in a book written by Jansen, though, in reality, no such propositions were to be found there; whereupon the existence of these propositions became forthwith a point of faith to the faithful.  Do you then think,” he demanded, “that there is one of the faithful who would not swallow, if called upon, the nephewship of Camillo Astalli as easily as the five propositions of Jansenius?” “Surely, then,” said I, “the faithful must be a pretty pack of simpletons!” Whereupon the man in black exclaimed, “What! a Protestant, and an infringer of the rights of faith!  Here’s a fellow, who would feel himself insulted if any one were to ask him how he could believe in the miraculous conception, calling people simpletons who swallow the five propositions of Jansenius, and are disposed, if called upon, to swallow the reality of the nephewship of Camillo Astalli.”

I was about to speak, when I was interrupted by the arrival of Belle.  After unharnessing her donkey, and adjusting her person a little, she came and sat down by us.  In the meantime I had helped my companion to some more hollands and water, and had plunged with him into yet deeper discourse.

CHAPTER III