“Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such a qualification as that?”

“What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself.”

“As how?”

“For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding saints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations.”

“I see, I see — it is the same thing.

It is wonderful. In the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations — mummified in ignorance and sloth — and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe into his impotent