In Italy, on the contrary, supposing the State had been violent, it could plead the earlier violences of the Church.

He did not see how the ugly facts could be denied; nor did a candid unveiling of them displease his Anglican taste.
'You should have made a study--and you have written a pamphlet,' he would say, with that slow shake of the head which showed him inexorable.

'Why have you given yourself to the Jesuits?
You were an Englishman and an outsider--enormous advantages! Why have you thrown them away ?' 'One must have information!--I merely went to headquarters.' 'You have paid for it too dear.

Your book is a plea for superstition!' Whereupon a flame in Manisty's black eyes, and a burst in honour of superstition, which set the garden paths echoing.
But Neal pushed quietly on; untiring, unappeasable; pointing to a misstatement here, an exaggeration there, till Manisty was in a roar of argument, furious half with his friend, half with himself.
Meanwhile if the writer bore attack hardly, the man of piety found it still harder to endure the praise of piety.

When Manisty denounced irresponsible science and free thought, as the enemies of the State, which must live, and can only live by religion; when he asked with disdain 'what reasonable man would nowadays weigh the membership of the Catholic church against an opinion in geology or exegesis'; when he dwelt on the _easiness_ of faith,--which had nothing whatever to do with knowledge, and had, therefore, no quarrel with knowledge; or upon the incomparable social power of religion;--his friend grew restive.