James Lane Allen

“ But the Quakers have never cried, "False witness"; the Methodists have never shouted, "Impertinence!" And the use that has been made of Protestant life in America has for hundreds and hundreds of years been made of Catholic life in every country of Europe. Balzac treats the character of a nun who lies to the Mother Superior that she may have an interview with her lover. She dies of love in the convent, and her body is carried off from the convent by her lover. But Balzac, himself a devoted Catholic, was not charged with wishing to fix a stigma on the Carmelites. ”

“ It has been understood in Europe for a thousand years that the writer is after tales, not sermons; but if a good tale makes a good sermon, so much the better. It was on the traditional privilege granted to the European writer that I based my own action in writing my own tales. But suppose that they were deliberately directed against these Kentucky institutions, as embodiments of the Catholic idea; what then? Is it not my right to oppose the Catholic idea in any form? For does not the Catholic consider it his right and his duty to attack the Protestant idea in any form? ”

“ To be silent under misrepresentation does no great harm; to make a poor defense—that is another matter. So that I am not to throw a ray of light upon my actions; I am to make the sun shine as at noonday.
It is charged, then, that I was admitted to the interior of the Trappist monastery, treated with every courtesy as a favored guest, allowed to learn much more than ordinary visitors do about the manners of life, rules, labors, fasts, and penances of the community ”