The Bishop had not, indeed, given much thought to the problems which most deeply engaged his companion.  His theory of life took no account of the future and concerned itself little with social conditions outside his own class; but he was acquainted with the classical schools of thought, and, having once acted as the late Duke’s envoy to the French court, had frequented the Baron d’Holbach’s drawing-room and familiarised himself with the views of the Encyclopaedists; though it was clear that he valued their teachings chiefly as an argument against asceticism.

“Life,” said he to Odo, as they sat one afternoon in a garden-pavilion above the river, a marble Mercury confronting them at the end of a vista of clipped myrtle, “life, cavaliere, is a stock on which we may graft what fruit or flower we choose.  See the orange-tree in that Capo di Monte jar:  in a week or two it will be covered with red roses.  Here again is a citron set with carnations; and but yesterday my gardener sent me word that he had at last succeeded in flowering a pomegranate with jasmine.  In such cases the gardener chooses as his graft the flower which, by its colour and fragrance, shall most agreeably contrast with the original stock; and he who orders his life on the same principle, grafting it with pleasures that form a refreshing off-set to the obligations of his rank and calling, may regard himself as justified by Nature, who, as you see, smiles on such abnormal unions among her children.—­Not long ago,” he went on, with a reminiscent smile, “I had here under my roof a young person who practised to perfection this art of engrafting life with the unexpected.  Though she was only a player in a strolling company—­a sweetheart of my wild nephew’s, as you may guess—­I have met few of her sex whose conversation was so instructive or who so completely justified the Scriptural adage, “the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning...”  He broke off to sip his chocolate.  “But why,” he continued, “do I talk thus to a young man whose path is lined with such opportunities?  The secret of happiness is to say with the great Emperor, ’Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature.’”

“Such a creed, monsignore,” Odo ventured to return, “is as flattering to the intelligence as to the senses; for surely it better becomes a reasoning being to face fate as an equal than to cower before it like a slave; but, since you have opened yourself so freely on the subject, may I carry your argument a point farther and ask how you reconcile your conception of man’s destiny with the authorised teachings of the Church?”

The Bishop raised his head with a guarded glance.

“Cavaliere,” said he, “the ancients did not admit the rabble to their sacred mysteries; nor dare we permit the unlettered to enter the hollowed precincts of the temple of Reason.”

“True,” Odo acquiesced; “but if the teachings of Christianity are the best safeguard of the people, should not those teachings at least be stripped of the grotesque excrescences with which the superstitions of the people and—­perhaps—­the greed and craft of the priesthood have smothered the simple precepts of Jesus?”