embling word to observe these obligations. Then, after he
had kissed the Bible and the Archbishop's extended hand, he threw
himself upon the floor in a torrent of tears.

On the following morning, a bright, sparkling November day, the little
Jose, spent with emotion, tore himself from his mother's clinging
embrace and set out for Rome, accompanied by his solicitous uncle.

"And, _queridito_," were the mother's last words, "I have your promise
that never will you voluntarily leave the Church?"

The appeal which his beseeching look carried back to her was not
granted. He slowly bowed his acquiescence, and turned away. A week
later he had entered upon the retreat with which the school year opens
in the _Seminario_.

CHAPTER 6

Rome, like a fallen gladiator, spent and prostrate on the Alban
hills, still awaits the issue of the conflict between the forces of
life and death within. Dead, where the blight of pagan and mediaeval
superstition has eaten into the quivering tissues; it lives where
the pulsing current of modernism expands its shrunken arteries and
bears the nourishing truth. Though eternal in tradition and
colossal in material achievement, the glory of the Imperial City
nevertheless rests on a foundation of perishable human ambitions,
creeds, and beliefs, manifested outwardly for a time in brilliant
deeds, great edifices, and comprehensive codes, but always bearing
within themselves the seeds of their own decay. No trophy brought to
her gates in triumph by the Caesars ever approached in worth the
simple truth with which Paul of Tarsus, chained to his jailer,
illumined his gloomy dungeon. Had the religious principles which he
and his devoted associates labored so unselfishly to impart to a
benighted world for its own good been recognized by Rome as the
"pearl without price," she would have built upon them as foundation
stones a truer glory, and one which would have drawn the nations of
the earth to worship within her walls. But Rome, in her master,
Constantine, saw only the lure of a temporal advantage to be gained
by fettering the totally misunderstood teachings of Jesus with the
shackles of organized politics. From this unhallowed marriage of
religion and statecraft was born that institution unlike either
parent, yet exhibiting modified characteristics of each, the Holy
Church. To this institution, now mighty in material riches and
power, but still mediaeval in character, despite the assaults of
cent