ugh's death he had to rebuke a tipsy
Irishman, who was an ardent Catholic and greatly devoted to Hugh. The
priest said, "Are you not ashamed to think that Monsignor's eye may be
on you now, and that he may see how you disgrace yourself?" To which,
he said, the Irishman replied, with perhaps a keener insight into Hugh's
character than his director, "Oh no, I can trust Monsignor not to take
advantage of me. I am sure that he will not come prying and spying
about. He always believed whatever I chose to tell him, God bless him!"
Hugh could be hard and unyielding on occasions, but he was wholly
incapable of being suspicious, jealous, malicious, or spiteful. He made
friends once with a man of morbid, irritable, and resentful tendencies,
who had continued, all his life, to make friends by his brilliance and
to lose them by his sharp, fierce, and contemptuous animosities. This
man eventually broke with him altogether, and did his best by a series
of ingenious and wicked letters to damage Hugh's character in all
directions. I received one of those documents and showed it to Hugh. I
was astonished at his courage and even indifference. I myself should
have been anxious and despondent at the thought of such evil innuendoes
and gross misrepresentations being circulated, and still more at the
sort of malignant hatred from which they proceeded. Hugh took the letter
and smiled. "Oh," he said, "I have put my case before the people who
matter, and you can't do anything. He is certainly mad, or on the verge
of madness. Don't answer it--you will only be drenched with these
communications. I don't trouble my head about it." "But don't you mind?"
I said. "No," he said, "I'm quite callous! Of course I am sorry that he
should be such a beast, but I can't help that. I have done my best to
make it up--but it is hopeless." And it was clear from the way he
changed the subject that he had banished the whole matter from his mind.
At a later date, when the letters to him grew more abusive, I was told
by one who was living with him, that he would even put one up on his
chimney-piece and point it out to visitors.

I always thought that he had a very conspicuous and high sort of
courage, not only in facing disagreeable and painful things, but in not
dwelling on them either before or after. This was never more entirely
exemplified than by the way he faced his operation, and indeed, most
heroically of all, in the way in which he died. There was a sense of