When he wrote 'Coningsby' and 'Sybil,' Disraeli regretted the Reformation. The most ardent admirer of the Middle Ages did not regard the overthrow of the ecclesiastical rule, and the suppression of the religious houses, with more displeasure, or believed more devotedly in the virtues of the abbots and the beneficent working of the monastic system. In his 'Life of Lord George Bentinck' he had so far changed his mind that he refuses to _Roman Catholic_ the dignity of capital letters. Twenty additional years of experience had taught him that the modern Roman hierarchy was as unscrupulous as the Reformers had described their predecessors, and that, of the many dangers which threatened England, there was none more insidious than the intrigues of ultramontane proselytisers. The battle of Mentana follows, and Garibaldi's defeat by the French. Lothair is shot down at the General's side, and is left for dead on the field. Being found breathing, he is taken up with the other wounded. His English Catholic friends are in Rome for the winter, and devote themselves to the care of the hospitals. An Italian woman brings word to Miss Arundel that one of her countrymen is lying at the point of death, who may be recovered if she takes charge of him. He is found to be Lothair, and the opportunity is seized for a thaumaturgical performance as remarkable as the miracle-working at Lourdes. The woman who brought the account is discovered, by a halo round her head, to have been the Virgin in person; Lothair, unknown to himself, to have fallen not as a Garibaldian but as a volunteer in the Papal army. He is carried, unconscious, to the enchanter's cave, in the shape of a room in the Agostini Palace. He is watched over while in danger by a beautiful veiled figure. He is surrounded in convalescence by adroit Monsignori, and prevailed on to assist in a ceremony which is represented to him as a mere thanksgiving for his recovery, but in which he finds himself walking first in a procession, candle in hand, at Miss Arundel's side, she and he the special objects of the Virgin's care. The next morning the whole performance is published in full in the 'Papal Gazette,' and his Cardinal guardian then appears on the stage, to tell him that he is 'the most favoured of men,' and that the Holy Father in person will immediately receive him into the Church. Too weak from illness to express his indignation in more than words, he protests against the insolent deceit. Nowhere in English fiction is there any passage where the satire is more delicate than in the Cardinal's rejoinder. Lothair opens a window into Disraeli's mind, revealing the inner workings of it more completely than anything else which he wrote or said. For this reason I have given so many pages to the analysis of it, and must give one or two more.