‘That makes no difference. Besides, I shall never have children; priests are not allowed to have any.’

She turned to look at him; his profile was towards her, against the bright background of the open doorway and the courtyard outside; it was a profile of pure, firm outline and dark skin, almost like a head of bronze, with long lashes shading the eyes with their large dark pupils. And as she gazed at the boy she could have wept, but she knew not why.

‘Are you quite sure you want to be a priest?’ she asked.

‘Yes, if that is God’s will.’

‘Priests are not allowed to marry, and suppose that some day you wanted to take a wife?’

‘I shall not want a wife, since God has forbidden it.’

‘God? But it is the Pope who has forbidden it,’ said the mother, somewhat taken aback at the boy’s answer.

‘The Pope is God’s representative on earth.’

‘But in olden times priests had wives and families, just as the Protestant clergy have now,’ she urged.

‘That is a different thing,’ said the boy, growing warm over the argument; ‘we ought not to have them!’

‘The priests in olden times …’ she persisted.

But the sacristan was well informed. ‘Yes, the priests in olden times,’ he said, ‘but then they themselves held a meeting and decided against it; and those who had no wives or families, the younger ones, were the very ones who opposed marriage the most strongly. That is as it should be.’

‘The younger ones!’ repeated the mother as if to herself. ‘But they know nothing about it! And then they may repent, they may even go astray,’ she added in a low voice, ‘they may come to reason and argue like the old priest.’

A tremor seized her and she looked swiftly round to assure herself that the ghost was not there, instantly repenting for having thus evoked it. She did not wish even to think about it, and least of all in connection with that matter. Was it not all ended? Moreover, Antiochus’s face wore an expression of the deepest scorn.

‘That man was not a priest, he was the devil’s brother come to earth! God save us from him! We had best not even think about him!’ and he made the sign of the cross. Then he continued, with recovered serenity:

‘As for repenting! Do you suppose that he, your son, ever dreams of repenting?’

It hurt her to hear the boy talk like that. She longed to be able to tell him something of her trouble, to warn him for the future, yet at the same time she rejoiced at his words, as though the conscience of the innocent lad were speaking to her conscience to commend and encourage it.

‘Does he, does my Paul say it is right for priests not to marry?’ she asked in a low voice.

‘If he does not say it is right, who should say so? Of course he says it is right; hasn’t he said so to you? A fine thing it would be to see a priest with his wife beside him and a child in his arms! And when he ought to go and say Mass he has to nurse the baby because it’s howling! What a joke! Imagine your son with one child in his arms and another hanging on to his cassock!’