Indeed, which seems to have been a rare thing in those days, his religious views were so enlarged that he had none at all.

His conduct, therefore, if from time to time it was affected by passing spasms of acute superstition, was totally uninfluenced by any settled spiritual hopes or fears, a condition which, he found, gave him great advantages in life.

In fact, had it suited his purpose, Montalvo was prepared, at a moment's notice, to become Lutheran or Calvinist, or Mahomedan, or Mystic, or even Anabaptist; on the principle, he would explain, that it is easy for the artist to paint any picture he likes upon a blank canvas.
And yet this curious pliancy of mind, this lack of conviction, this absolute want of moral sense, which ought to have given the Count such great advantages in his conflict with the world, were, in reality, the main source of his weakness.

Fortune had made a soldier of the man, and he filled the part as he would have filled any part.

But nature intended him for a play-actor, and from day to day he posed and mimed and mouthed through life in this character or in that, though never in his own character, principally because he had none.