"But, at least, Professor, I hope you are able to give them credit for honest intentions, however mistaken they might have been?" interposed Merrill, who was the son of a country parson and had so far preserved his simple faith intact. It may be remarked here, that Nitocris was well aware of this, and loved her strong-souled sailor all the better for it. Franklin Marmion did not, but then he thought any creed good enough for "a mere fighting man." "There were schemers and scoundrels among them on both sides, sir," replied the American quietly. "The temptation was too big; but I am quite willing to allow that the majority of them, even the Inquisitors, were honest zealots who really did think it right to produce any amount of suffering and misery here on earth in order to get matters straightened out, as they thought, hereafter. Charles V. was the most enlightened monarch of his age and the worst persecutor, and Torquemada, away from his religion, was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Calvin was a good man, but he watched Servetus burn, and our own Pilgrim Fathers on the other side were just about as hard men as any when it came to arguing out a religious question with whips and pillories and thumbscrews, and the like. I don't want to offend any one's sentiment or question any one's faith. To each man the belief that satisfies him, but personally I have no use for a religion that can't get itself believed without persecution." "I quite agree with you there, Professor," replied Merrill, who felt a little chilled by the perfect aloofness with which the other spoke, and was wondering what his dear old father, living his quiet, saintly life among the Derbyshire dales, would have thought of such cold-blooded heresy. "I have always looked upon that sort of brutal intolerance as a form of religious mania--sincere, but still mania, and the story of it is the most awful chapter in human history----" "Except, perhaps, the story of war," interrupted Professor Marmion, with a snap in his voice. Monomania, more or less harmless, is a not infrequent affliction of very high intelligences, and a quite unreasoning hatred of war was his, although within the last few days he had come to suspect disquieting misgivings on the subject, possibly in consequence of the higher knowledge to which he was attaining. "My dear sir," replied Merrill quite good-humouredly, and not at all sorry for the diversion, "I am glad to say that I agree with you also. No man who has not actually fought can have any just idea of the appalling abominations of war, and I am sure that no men hate it more devotedly than those who have to fight. But we have to take the world as it is, and not as we would like it to be; and as long as we have people in it who want to set it on fire for their own brutally selfish purposes, we shall have to keep the fire-extinguishers in good order."