Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/207

 my actions—neither the one nor the other of them. When I spoke in Skibberup Meeting House, it was after having carefully weighed the matter, and I have no reason to wish it undone. I feel that yesterday, for the first time, the congregation and I were at one,—and if you, sir, had been present, you would certainly have been obliged to admit that the satisfaction was mutual."

"I am quite ready to believe that!" the Provst blazed out. "If you tell stories to children and peasants, and flatter them a little, they are soon pleased. If that is the grand discovery you have made, you have been a good while about it, I must say. I could have taught you that piece of wisdom some time ago."

"You make a mistake," answered Emanuel in a restrained voice, and with a dignified look. "It was neither tales nor flattery which opened the ears of the listeners, but solely the fact that I came forward as a man among men, not as a judge among sinners. My great discovery is this—if you really care to know it,—that a priest may have some other object than merely going about as the tax-collector of heaven, and keeping account of the sins of men—and on this point I received the most desirable confirmation yesterday."

"Oh, ho! so it has gone as far as that with you! You are already so case-hardened that I am to hear all the weaver's phrases from your mouth. Really you have been a willing pupil, Mr Hansted!