His ideas of missionary work were peculiar and interesting. "We should always," he said, "treat savages and the utterly uneducated, whether at home or abroad, who are scarcely better than savages, like little children, like very little children in intelligence, yet endowed with the passions and vices of grown up men. One should therefore, if possible, never try to teach them things beyond their understanding, but make their practical civilization proceed _pari passu_ with their religious training—instilling morality before preaching doctrine and dogma, both teachings being backed up by unexceptionable example. "These are not my own ideas," added Padre Anselmo, "they are the precepts of the wonderful man who preceded me in the Amazon Mission, the present Pontiff, His Holiness Pope Pius IX., whose equal will never again occupy the chair of St. Peter."
"What! was the Pope ever a missionary?" I asked with astonishment. I knew he had been a soldier, and had been even assured that in his early days he was initiated a Freemason in a Lodge in Sicily; there was nothing very extraordinary in his having been a missionary, but I had never heard of it before, and was therefore taken by surprise.
"Indeed he was," replied Padre Anselmo, "and a very zealous and hard-working missionary, whose memory is reverenced to this day, among many a wild tribe on the banks of the Amazon."
Then we began to talk politics, that is to say I talked, the Monk only listened, till musingly I said, "I wonder who will succeed him in the Chair of St. Peter?"
"Whoever he may be," replied the Monk, "he will have a difficult task coming after such a man."
"I was there two months ago," he replied.
"What then do you think of Cardinal P—? do you know him?"
The Monk fixed his eyes on me for a moment, as if he would have read my most inmost thoughts, and then speaking very slowly, said:
"That Sicilian Monk has long been aiming at the Tiara; he lives within himself, has no confidant, no intimate friend, has no talents, only plenty of doggedness, _vorrebbe Papeggiare_, but no, never will he occupy the Pontifical chair, never!" and the Monk, for a minute looked me full in the face.
We were now getting quite close to the town, which is built on the narrow strip of land that lies between the Adriatic and the Dalmatian mountains, that here rise up almost perpendicularly behind it. The morning mists were clearing off, and the hazy outlines of the towers and ramparts, the cupolas and steeples, together with the bright colouring of the sails of the felucas and trabaccoli gliding out of the harbour, threading their way through the many islands scattered outside it, formed a picture that might be realized by a painter but of which I will not attempt the description.