Some one asked whether it was lawful for any one, not a bishop, to wear a zucchetto during the celebration of Mass. As usual, there was a pleasant diversity of opinion, some contending that the privilege was reserved to the episcopate, inasmuch as the great rubricists only contemplated bishops in laying down the rules for the removal and assumption of the zucchetto; others again maintained that any priest might wear one; and others limited the honor to regulars, who habitually wore the tonsure. The chairman, however, stopped the discussion peremptorily, and again asked (this time a very aged priest) the question he had put to Father Delany. The old man answered promptly:-- "The zucchetto, or pileolus, is removed at the end of the last secret prayer, and resumed after the ablutions." "Quite right," said the chairman. "By the way," said the old man, "you pronounce that word pileōlus. The word is pileŏlus." "The word is pileōlus," said the chairman, whose throne wasn't exactly lined with velvet this day. "Pardon me. The word is pileŏlus. You find it as such in the scansions of Horace." "This is your province, Father Dan," said the bishop. "There's no one in the diocese so well qualified to adjudicate here--" "'Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi--' my Lord!" said I. I was drawing the bishop out. "There were ironical cheers at 'Agamemnona.'" "'Mutato nomine, de te Fabula narratur,'" said the bishop, smiling. "Of course, we have many a rich depositary of classical lore here, "'At suave est ex magno tollere acervo.'" "My Lord," said I, pointing around the table, "'Omnes hi metuunt versus, odere poetas,'"-- ("Oh! Oh! Oh!" from the Conference.) "'Nec recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus Non ubivis coramve quibuslibet.'" Here the Master of Conference, seeing that the bishop was getting the worst of it, though his Lordship is a profound scholar, broke in:-- "'Ohe! Jam satis est! Dum æs exigitur, dum mula ligatur, Tota abit hora.'" He looked at me significantly when he said, "dum mula ligatur," but I had the victory, and I didn't mind. "Now, look here, Father Dan, you're simply intolerable. The Conference can't get along so long as you are here. You are forever intruding your classics when we want theology." "I call his Lordship and the Conference to witness," I said, "that I did not originate this discussion. In fact, I passed over in charitable silence the chairman's gross mispronunciation of an ordinary classical word, although I suffered the tortures of Nessus by my forbearance--" "There will be no end to this, my Lord," said the chairman. "That'll do, Father Dan. Now, Father Irwin." I was silent, but I winked softly at myself. CHAPTER XXIII A BATTLE OF GIANTS