is that of Cimabue, of Raphael, of Marot, of Shakespeare (no Protestant he), the Catholicism of those friars who pored over Greek texts, of those inspired workmen who painted stained glass, of the fine ladies with the pearl-braided hair who, with hands delicate as sprays of fern, embroidered chasubles, and, all of them, interposed a bulwark between the culture of man and the stinking men-at-arms. That Catholicism is the Catholicism of song and dance, the Catholicism of the juggler and the troubadour, not only the Catholicism of the stake but the Catholicism of Merrie England before Calvin came to blow a black breath upon a world not yet made grey by the Galilean.[4] [4] Anatole France would hate our Puritan practices, such as the prohibition of billiards in hotels and of cricket in the parks on Sunday. It might be concluded that Anatole France is an atheist, but that is not correct; he has said too definitely that though man may not be immortal, he is eternal. He merely does not know whence we came nor whither we go, nor I think does he care much; he is merely a member of the band, Voltaire, Renan, Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, Haeckel (doubtful that one), who were not willing to believe without understanding, and yet agreed that there might be something in which to believe if one could understand it. Briefly, he is an agnostic. He refuses to make the slightly self-conscious effort which certain literary men, in England and in France, successfully make to accept the spiritual origin of miracles and such like matters. What is, is, and what may be, may be: that is enough. But his theology is so intermingled with his human interests that at bottom he is a pagan; he loves beauty so well that he discovers it even in faith, and it is evident that he would have found much pleasure in the rites of the ancient Greeks. In his celebrated novel, _Thais_, he hails pagan beauty as he holds up for our contemptuous sympathy the sorrow of Paphnutius, the monk of Arsinoe. The monk set forth to redeem Thais, the courtesan; for her beauty and her soul he abandoned his cell and his hair shirt. She was unhappy and superstitious, and she feared the life to come; at his behest she turned to the Christian God. But Paphnutius burned himself with the torch he had lit; Thais assailed him in dream, and though he strove to fight his passion by solitude, by fasting, by becoming a stylite, he failed. In dream he dishonoured his soul, and at last, surrendering, he rushed to Thais, but found her dying and become a saint; doubt, fear and despair had compassed his downfall, and it was too late to love: he could be naught save a vampire.