AGNES OF SORRENTO.


CHAPTER XVI.

ELSIE PUSHES HER SCHEME.


The good Father Antonio returned from his conference with the cavalier
with many subjects for grave pondering. This man, as he conjectured, so
far from being an enemy either of Church or State, was in fact in many
respects in the same position with his revered master,--as nearly so as
the position of a layman was likely to resemble that of an ecclesiastic.
His denial of the Visible Church, as represented by the Pope and
Cardinals, sprang not from an irreverent, but from a reverent spirit. To
accept _them_ as exponents of Christ and Christianity was to blaspheme
and traduce both, and therefore he only could be counted in the highest
degree Christian who stood most completely opposed to them in spirit and
practice.

His kind and fatherly heart was interested in the brave young nobleman.
He sympathized fully with the situation in which he stood, and he even
wished success to his love; but then how was he to help him with Agnes,
and above all with her old grandmother, without entering on the awful
task of condemning and exposing that sacred authority which all the
Church had so many years been taught to regard as infallibly inspired?
Long had all the truly spiritual members of the Church who gave ear to
the teachings of Savonarola felt that the nearer they followed Christ
the more open was their growing antagonism to the Pope and the