The Henson Journals

[171]

Saturday, August 18th, 1923.

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We packed, and, together with our host & hostess, drove to Folkstone, where we took train for London. There was a vast throng of tourists returning to the metropolis. It was explained to us that it was the last day of a fortnightly cheap excursion. We had another crowd to encounter at Charing Cross, and at Euston, but we did finally get into the train to travel to Lichfield with fair comfort. Godfrey met us at the station.

My dream of last Thursday was not without significance: for Dorothea poured out to me a truly lamentable account of Harold. [p.168]

Godfrey told us that the Bishop of Jerusalem had described to him the ceremony in S.Peter's at which Joan of Arc was canonised. The Bishop had been given a prominent place, from which he was able to see clearly the actual procedure. He noticed that the two cardinals who were assisting the Pope tasted the unconsecrated elements before passing them to the Pontiff for consecration. He had subsequently been shown an account of the ceremonial to be observed on such an occasions, & he found there directions that the unconsecrated elements should be thus tasted in order that the consecrating Pontiff might be secured against poison!

In Count von Hohenlohe's journals Godfrey tells me that there is a statement in which the curious fact is pointed out that the ecclesiastical victims of the Parisian Commune in 1871 were all men whom the Jesuits regarded with dislike! This is a sinister fact, if it be a fact, and cannot but set one thinking.

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