He had nearly stripped himself of his own considerable means, reserving to himself only the bare competence on which a Catholic priest might live.

He was altogether a very queer fish! I remember his coming to me once in tearful but very angry mood, because, as he said, I had guilefully spread snares for his soul! I had not the smallest comprehension of his meaning till I discovered that his woe and wrath were occasioned by my having sent him as a present Berington's _Middle Ages_.

I had fancied that his course of studies and line of thought would have made the book interesting to him, utterly ignorant or oblivious of the fact that it laboured under the disqualification of appearing in the _Index_.
I take it I knew little about the _Index_ in those days.

In after years, when three or four of my own books had been placed in its columns, I was better informed.

I remember a very elegant lady who having overheard my present wife mention the fact that a recently published book of mine had been placed in the _Index_, asked her, with the intention of being extremely polite and complimentary, whether _her_ (my wife's) books had been put in the _Index_.