But now and then, when he is annoyed by the externals of Christianity, Anatole France becomes more militant. He has written (in _Mother of Pearl_) a story entitled _The Procurator of Judæa_, which ranks with the finest of de Maupassant’s, and is deeper in intention than anything de Maupassant ever wrote. A generation after the Crucifixion, Pilate, then talking the waters for gout in Northern Italy, meets an old friend who was once at Jerusalem. They talk of horses, of the policy of Vitellius, of the waters, of the things that would interest Roman gentlemen, and, little by little, they come to talk of those silly, noisy, obstinate Jews who used to raise such wrangles and such schisms in Jerusalem. And they talk of Mary Magdalene, in her pre-scriptural days: “By the light of a smoky little lamp, on a wretched carpet she danced, raising her arms to strike the cymbals. Her back arched, her head thrown back, as if drawn down by the heavy weight of her ruddy hair, her eyes drowned in lust, ardent and languishing, she would have caused Cleopatra herself to blush for envy....” They sigh, for Magdalene was very beautiful and seductive (in her pre-scriptural days). Then the friend recalls that she followed “a young Galilean thaumaturge who was crucified,” says the friend, “for I don’t know what crime.” Pontius Pilate thinks for a long time; crucifixion was so commonplace in those days. After a while he says: “Jesus? Jesus of Nazareth? No, I don’t remember him.” I know that many who read this will charge Anatole France with blasphemy. Well, blasphemy has its uses: it parts the sheep from the goats; it impresses the waverers and drives such of them as are weak of faith into agnosticism, while it shocks the faithful and strengthens their militancy. The blasphemer may render a service to the faith. Blasphemy need not be ignorant; indeed, true blasphemy is possible only in the enlightened: the unenlightened find it easier to believe; it is so difficult to believe when one does not know. Now Anatole France does not know, and he is, so far as that goes, in the position of St Francis, but where he differs from St Francis is that he does not believe that which he does not know. (I am assuming that St Francis did believe, that he did more than want to believe.) For Anatole France understands perfectly well the Catholic attitude and its Christian variations; he has a full understanding of it, its simplicity, gaiety, charm, of its tender humanity, of the beautiful Catholic sympathy with the weakness of man, with the feeble hands that cannot seize more than the hem of the seamless garment. He loves this Catholicism which he detests because, after all, while spreading among the people brute ignorance, infamous asceticism, prejudices and an intolerance resulting in a cruelty foreign to the tiger, it somehow, through the Dark Ages, kept burning the flame of the arts. The Catholicism of Anatole France