It is that the glorious religion of Christ, the holy faith
in which my mother died, the faith made venerable by all these saints
around us, is made the tool and instrument of such vileness and cruelty
that one is tempted to doubt whether it were not better to have been
born of heathen in the good old times of the Roman Republic,--God
forgive me for saying so! Does the Most Christian King of France know
that the man who pretends to rule in the name of Christ is not a
believer in the Christian religion,--that he does not believe even in a
God,--that he obtained the holy seat by simony,--that he uses all its
power to enrich a brood of children whose lives are so indecent that it
is a shame to modest lips even to _say_ what they do?"
"Why, of course," said the other, "the King of France is pretty well
informed about all these things. You know old King Charles, when he
marched through Italy, had more than half a mind, they say, to pull the
old Pope out of his place; and he might have done it easily. My father
was in his train at that time, and he says the Pope was frightened
enough. Somehow they made it all up among them, and settled about their
territories, which is the main thing, after all; and now our new King, I
fancy, does not like to meddle with him: between you and me, he has his
eye in another direction here. This gay city would suit him admirably,
and he fancies he can govern it as well as it is governed now.
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