Nothing of this kind was to be seen in Roman churches. The priests officiated with reverence at the altars, assisted by their little acolytes, while the rôle of the deacon and the sub-deacons and the choir was carried out by the congregation itself. Seated on chairs, with prayer-books in their hands, the people followed the service, gave the responses, and sang the prayers. Sermons were preached by gifted and eloquent preachers, usually in the evening, quite apart from any service, and these sermons always drew large and eager crowds of listeners. In Russia, Irene had gained the impression that the Catholic Church was nothing so much as dry and scholastic, stifling all individual thought, and destroying all culture. In Rome, this erroneous idea was soon dissipated, and she realized that Catholicism had, on the contrary, through all the centuries of its existence, faithfully served the cause of progress. The Roman Popes had all been connoisseurs of art. They had surrounded themselves with great painters and sculptors, had given them orders, and had encouraged them in every possible way. They had collected and religiously preserved old books and manuscripts, had organized extensive excavations and researches, and had decorated the halls of the Vatican and the Lateran with the antique statues they had discovered. Catholic schools and colleges had educated numbers of highly talented people. Even that famous negator of Christianity, Renan, was also a pupil of one of these institutions. The Catholic system of education does not stifle the intelligence—on the contrary, it gives freedom and encouragement to the youthful imagination. Until now, in spite of every kind of persecution, monks and nuns are looked upon in Western Europe as the best and most capable educators of the young. They put their whole souls into their work, and receive in return the love and respect of their pupils. Irene thought of her own spiritual isolation, her loneliness and despair, during the old days at home in Petrograd. She had had nowhere to go, no one to whom to apply for comfort and advice, and each and everyone of her acquaintances had been as lonely and spiritually friendless as herself. In Russia, she had considered the accepted cold relations between the faithful and their spiritual fathers as perfectly natural; now, she had seen and appreciated the value of very different conditions. Père Etienne was an old man, and suffered severely from asthma, so that to reach Irene’s room on the second floor was no small matter, and left him out of breath for some time after his arrival there. In spite of this, however, he considered it his duty to go and see her every day, to comfort her, to dissipate her doubts, and to renew her courage. It was her soul that was precious to him, and he exerted all his powers to save this soul, and to lead it into the right channel.