nd that she would not be insulted in the streets
by savage monks.

'Now she will confess her sins inside--all but those which she has been
showing off to us here outside, and beat her breast, and weep like a
very Magdalen; and then the worthy man will comfort her with--"What a
beautiful chain! And what a shawl--allow me to touch it! How soft and
delicate this Indian wool! Ah! if you knew the debts which I have been
compelled to incur in the service of the sanctuary!--" And then of
course the answer will be, as, indeed, he expects it should, that if it
can be of the least use in the service of the Temple, she, of course,
will think it only too great an honour.... And he will keep the chain,
and perhaps the shawl too. And she will go home, believing that she
has fulfilled to the very letter the command to break off her sins by
almsgiving, and only sorry that the good priest happened to hit on that
particular gewgaw!'

'What,' asked Philammon; 'dare she actually not refuse such
importunity?'

'From a poor priest like me, stoutly enough; but from a popular
ecclesiastic like him.... As Jerome says, in a letter of his I once saw,
ladies think twice in such cases before they offend the city newsmonger.
Have you anything more to say?'

Philammon had nothing to say; and wisely held his peace, while the old
grumbler ran on--

'Ah, boy, you have yet to learn city fashions! When you are a little
older, instead of speaking unpleasant truths to a fine lady with a cross
on her forehead, you will be ready to run to the Pillars of Hercules
at her beck and nod, for the sake of her disinterested help towards a
fashionable pulpit, or perhaps a bishopric. The ladies settle that for
us here.'

'The women?'

'The women, lad. Do you suppose that they heap priests and churches
with wealth for nothing? They have their reward. Do you suppose that
a preacher gets into the pulpit of that church there, without looking
anxiously, at the end of each peculiarly flowery sentence, to see
whether her saintship there is clapping or not? She, who has such a
delicate sense for orthodoxy, that she can scent out Novatianism or
Origenism where no other mortal nose would suspect it. She who meets at
her own house weekly all the richest and most pious women of the city,
to settle our discipline for us' as the court cooks do our doctrine. She
who has even, it is whispered, the ear of the Augusta Pulcheria herself,
and sends monthly letters to her at Cons