But the public cause sets further strife betwixt your father and me.

Who so active as he to execute the fatal edict of black St.Bartholomew's day, when so many hundreds of gospel-preachers were expelled from house and home--from hearth and altar--from church and parish, to make room for belly-gods and thieves?
Who, when a devoted few of the Lord's people were united to lift the fallen standard, and once more advance the good cause, was the readiest to break their purpose--to search for, persecute, and apprehend them?
Whose breath did I feel warm on my neck--whose naked sword was thrust within a foot of my body, whilst I lurked darkling, like a thief in concealment, in the house of my fathers ?--It was Geoffrey Peveril's--it was your father's!--What can you answer to all this, or how can you reconcile it with your present wishes?
"These things I point out to you, Julian, that I may show you how impossible, in the eyes of a merely worldly man, would be the union which you are desirous of.

But Heaven hath at times opened a door, where man beholds no means of issue.

Julian, your mother, for one to whom the truth is unknown, is, after the fashion of the world, one of the best, and one of the wisest of women; and Providence, which gave her so fair a form, and tenanted that form with a mind as pure as the original frailty of our vile nature will permit, means not, I trust, that she shall continue to the end to be a vessel of wrath and perdition.

Of your father I say nothing--he is what the times and example of others, and the counsels of his lordly priest, have made him; and of him, once more, I say nothing, save that I have power over him, which ere now he might have felt, but that there is one within his chambers, who might have suffered in his suffering.