After his meeting with Rachel, which has been described in the previous chapter, he had visited her home with the laudable desire of converting the family to the true faith, and had found himself confronted with peculiar difficulties. He strove to draw them into argument, but in a theological sense they slipped through his fingers. Aaron's course in this respect was premeditated, Rachel's was unconsciously pursued. She listened to all he said, and smilingly acquiesced in his declaration that there was only one road open to heaven's gates. "It is the road of right-doing, father," she said, "the road of kindness, of doing unto others as you would they should do unto you, of dispensing out of your store, whether it be abundant or not, what you can do to relieve the unfortunate. You are right, father; there is only one road." By her sweetness and charity, by her practical sympathy with the suffering, she cut the ground from under his feet. He spoke of the saints, and she said they were good men and women, and were receiving their reward. In a word, she took the strength and subtlety out of him, and he yielded with sighs of regret and admiration. With Aaron he was more trenchant, and quite as unsuccessful. Many of Aaron's humorous observations made the good priest laugh in spite of himself, and the pearls of wisdom which fell from the Jew's lips crumbled his arguments to dust. There was no scoffing or irreverence on Aaron's part; he simply parried the thrusts with a wisdom and humanity deeper and truer than those of which his antagonist could boast. "My son," said the curé, "would you not make me a Jew if it were in your power?" "No," replied Aaron, "we do not proselytize, and even if we did you are too good a Christian for me to wish to make you a Jew." This was one of the puzzling remarks which caused the curé to ponder and which dwelt long in his mind; sometimes he thought that Aaron was a man of deep subtlety, sometimes that he was a man of great simplicity, but whether subtle or simple he felt it impossible to withhold a full measure of respect from one whose eternal lot he sighed to think was perdition and everlasting torment. That sincerity was the true test of faith, as Aaron declared, he would not admit; there could be no sincerity in a faith that was false, there could be no sincerity if you did not believe as he believed. Nevertheless he had an uncomfortable impression that he was being continually worsted in the peaceful war of words in which they invariably engaged when they came together.