S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
This letter produced in Newman's mind a singular mixture of exhilaration
and awe. At first, Mr. Babcock's tender conscience seemed to him a
capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get into a
deeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and
ludicrously just. Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries,
that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionable
thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art
and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral. Newman
had a great contempt for immorality, and that evening, for a good half
hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt
rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock's letter.
His good nature checked his resenting the young minister's lofty
admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking
them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he
found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of the
sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. It
represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl,
kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face.
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