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be very sensitive there. We are better minding our own business.’
    On this evening Mr Collopy had given an incoherent little cry.
    –A pipe, Collopy. Just a pipe.
    –And when did this start?
    –It is a fortnight now.
    –Well … I see no objection if it suits you, though I think it’s a bad habit and a dirty habit. Creates starch in the stomach, I believe.
    –Like many a thing, Father Fahrt said urbanely, it is harmless in moderation. Please God I will not become an addict …
    Here he peremptorily scratched himself about the back.
    –Haven’t I one cross to bear as it is? But the doctor I saw recently thought my mind was a bit inclined to wander, a very bad thing in our Order. Father Superior voiced the view that I was doing too much work, perhaps. I would not take a drug, so the doctor said tobacco in moderation was a valuable sedative. He smokes himself, of course. This pipe was a penance for the first week. But now it is good. Now I can think.
    –I’ll keep my eye on you and by dad I might follow suit myself, starch and all. I needn’t tell you I also have my worries… my confusions. My work is inclined to get out of hand.
    –You will win, Collopy, for your persistence is heroic. The man whose aim is to smooth out the path of the human race cannot easily fail.
    –Well, I hope that’s true. Give me your glass.
    Here new drinks were decanted with sacramental piety and precision.
    –It’s a queer thing, Father Fahrt mused, that men in my position have again and again to attack the same problem, solve it, and yet find that the solution is never any easier to reach. Next week I have to give a retreat at Kinnegad. After that, other retreats at Kilbeggan and Tullamore.
    –Hah! Kilbeggan? That’s where my little crock here came from, refilled a hundred times since. And emptied a hundred times too, by gob.
    –I like to settle on a central theme for a retreat. Often it is not simple to think of a good one. No hell fire preaching by our men, of course.
    Mr Collopy nodded, reflectively. When eventually he spoke there was impatience in his voice.
    –You Jesuits, Father, are always searching for nice little out-of-the-way points, some theological rigmarole. Most of you fellows think you are Aquinas. For God’s sake haven’t you got the Ten Commandments? What we call the Decalogue?
    –Ah, Saint Thomas! Yes, in his Summa he has many interesting things to say about the same Decalogue. So had Duns Scotus and Nicolaus de Lyra. Of course it is the true deposit.
    –Mean to say, why don’t the people of this country obey the Ten Commandments given in charge of Moses? ‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’ The young people of today think the daddy is a tramp and the mammy a poor skivvy. Isn’t that right?
    Here the brother coughed.
    –Oh no, Father Fahrt said.
    He also coughed here but I think the pipe was responsible.
    –It is just that young people are a bit thoughtless. I would say you were as bad as the rest, Collopy, when you were a young fellow.
    –Yes, Father. I could trust you to say that. I suppose you also think I coveted my neighbour’s wife?
    –No, Collopy, not while you were a young fellow.
    – What? You mean when I grew up to man’s estate—
    –No, no, Collopy, it is my jest.
    –Faith then and I don’t think the Commandments are the right thing for God’s anointed to be funny about. I never put my hand near a married woman and there are two of them on my committee, very valuable, earnest souls.
    –What nonsense! I know that.
    –You want to scarify the divils in the town of Kinnegad? There are pubs in that place. What about our other old friend Thou shalt not steal’?
    –A much neglected ordinance.
    –Well if the pishrogues of publicans there are anything like the Dublin ones, they are hill and dale robbers. They water the whiskey and then give you short measure. They give you a beef sandwich with no beef in it, only scraws hacked off last Sunday’s roast by the mammy upstairs with her