his body?"

"Then you suppose ignorantly," said the man in black; "eating the
bodies of the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs
and legatees of people who left property; and this custom is
alluded to in the text."

"But what has the New Testament to do with heathen customs," said
I, "except to destroy them?"

"More than you suppose," said the man in black. "We priests of
Rome, who have long lived at Rome, know much better what the New
Testament is made of than the heretics and their theologians, not
forgetting their Tinkers; though I confess some of the latter have
occasionally surprised us--for example, Bunyan. The New Testament
is crowded with allusions to heathen customs, and with words
connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respect to words, I would
fain have you, who pretend to be a philologist, tell me the meaning
of Amen."

I made no answer.

"We of Rome," said the man in black, "know two or three things of
which the heretics are quite ignorant; for example, there are those
amongst us--those, too, who do not pretend to be philologists--who
know what Amen is, and, moreover, how we got it. We got it from
our ancestors, the priests of ancient Rome; and they got the word
from their ancestors of the East, the priests of Buddh and Brahma."

"And what is the meaning of the word?" I demanded.