Note 6 — Chapter VI

I was at this time a child in the schoolroom; we had no knowledge of each other's existence; I therefore had no part in the matter. He did not tell me of it until we had been married for some time, as he wished, he said, to see if he was paramount in my mind, and that I would make the sacrifice for him, which was necessary for our marriage later on. He then said, "that if a man had a religion, it must be the Catholic; it was the religion of a gentleman—a terrible religion for a man of the world to live in, but a good one to die in." I have often wondered that this step never excited any comment; he wrote of it freely; he spoke of it freely until his latter years; but as he did not like me to do so, I never did. Nobody ever dared to question his action till after he was dead; but when the master-mind, the witty tongue was powerless, when the scathing pen the strong right sword-arm could no longer wield, people fell foul of me for speaking of it as a simple and natural fact. I never called him a devout practical Catholic; I only said he was received into the Church, and that he meant to have its rites at the time of his death.—I. B.