Note 9 — Chapter VIII

One day at dinner we were speaking of the final condemnation of sinners. The brother of Colonel D’Ivory who had been in the army, and was certainly a clever and intelligent man, said, ‘he did not understand how it could be possible for a priest to go out of the world in a state of condemnation.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘did I understand you right? suppose he were a wicked man?’ ‘Mais oui, Monsieur, á tel moment que ce soit, il peut se confesser!’

At another time, I was laughing with a very sensible officer, who had been in the English army, at ignorant persons, who thought that any thing which had touched a certain image in that neighbourhood, was a preservative against the bite of a mad dog; when he took a silver ring from his finger, and said, ‘how then do you think I have been preserved from being bit all these years, but by this ring, which has been rubbed against the image?’