Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/45

 politics except with liberals. There's room for discussion in the nuances; there's too much room for it with those who call my black white." . . . While it was generally known among his friends that he was a devout Catholic, only a few were allowed to see how much reliance he placed in religion; and he would grow impatient with what he considered a morbid protestant passion for worrying at something that for him had been immutably settled.

In political debates he would only join at the prompting of extreme sympathy or extreme exasperation. His native feeling for the Boers in the Transvaal was little shared in England during the South African war; and his loathing for English misrule in Ireland was too strong to be ventilated acceptably among the people whom he met most commonly in London. His connection with the Legitimist cause came to an end with the outbreak of war: though he had hitherto delighted in penetrating beween the sentries at St. James' Palace and placarding the wall with an appeal to all loyal subjects of the rightful king, he was unable to continue his