Here, then, sitting upon this Roman road I considered the nature of such men and when I had thought out carefully where the nearest Don might be at the moment, I decided that he was at least twenty-three miles away, and I was very glad: for it permitted me to contemplate the road with common sense, and with Faith, which is Common Sense transfigured; and I could see the Legionaries climbing the hill.... But chiefly there returned as I gazed the delicious thought that learned men, laborious and heavily endowed, had denied the _existence_ of this Roman road.... Here was a piece of pedantry and skepticism which might make some men weep and some men stamp with irritation ... but which fed in my own spirit a fountain of pure joy. As I considered carefully what kind of man it is who denies these things; the kind of way he talks; the kind of face he has; the kind of book he writes; the kind of publisher who chisels him; and the kind of way in which his works are bound.... With every moment my elation grew greater and more impetuous.... But as they brought me beer and bacon that evening, and I toasted the morning, the memory of things past, I said to myself: “Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham—you four great Universities—you terrors of Europe—that road is older than you: and meanwhile I drink to your continued healths, and let us have a little room ... air, give us air, good people. I stifle when I think of you.”[47] No wonder he was ignored! What else could they do with a man like that? Once he subjected his own masterpiece, _The Path to Rome_, to the techniques and presuppositions of the “Higher Criticism,” and he proved his own book to have been written probably as early as the year 2006. It was all high and hilarious fun, until the enraged Catholic, the dedicated man, flashed out in the last lines: “That is how the damned fools write: and with brains of that standard Germans ask me to deny my God.”[48]