He would have been apt to tell
you, savagely, that "he wrought for it."
Besides, it made him out of temper to meet the sisters. Knowles could
have sketched for you with a fine decision of touch the _role_ played
by the Papal power in the progress of humanity,--how jar it served as a
stepping-stone, and the exact period when it became a wearisome clog.
The world was done with it now, utterly. Its breath was only poisoned,
with coming death. So the homely live charity of these women, their
work, which, no other hands were ready to take, jarred against his
abstract theory, and irritated him, as an obstinate fact always does run
into the hand of a man who is determined to clutch the very heart of a
matter. Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle of a world, in
spite of the positive philosophers, you know.
Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflects
all men and creeds alike, like colorless water, drawing the truth from
all, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, who
thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it
went on its slow way. An intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truth he
did know was so terribly real to him, he had suffered from the evil, and
there was such sick, throbbing pity in his heart for men who suffered as
he had done! And then, fanatics must make history for conservative men
to learn from, I suppose.
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