My third temptation was held out in the pomp of Rome⁠—the glory of her kingdom. I was taken to the churches on solemn occasions⁠—days of fête and state; I was shown the Papal ritual and ceremonial. I looked at it.

Many people⁠—men and women⁠—no doubt far my superiors in a thousand ways, have felt this display impressive, have declared that though their Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot say the same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial jewellery, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.

This I did not tell Père Silas; he was old, he looked venerable: through every abortive experiment, under every repeated disappointment, he remained personally kind to me, and I felt tender of hurting his feelings. But on the evening of a certain day when, from the balcony of a great house, I had been made to witness a huge mingled procession of the church and the army⁠—priests with relics, and soldiers with weapons, an obese and aged archbishop, habited in cambric and lace, looking strangely like a grey daw in bird-of-paradise plumage, and a band of young girls fantastically robed and garlanded⁠— then I spoke my mind to M. Paul.

“I did not like it,” I told him; “I did not respect such ceremonies; I wished to see no more.”