Once in the Papal city, Aubrey de Vere introduced him into a Catholic circle of notable grace and distinction; and here, with "deliberate speed, majestic instancy," he continued his search after truth. It was not an easy struggle. We have the whole story in his little "Autobiography" of the spirit; and it proves that while the man's reason was soon convinced, his will remained faltering and unpersuaded. The further he advanced—stepping into the battle of truth and error, he calls it, instead of being merely a spectator—the more vehemently developed his own natural reluctance. After several weeks of this ordeal, flesh warring against spirit and reason against conscience in the age-old strife of centripetal and centrifugal force, it flashed upon our poet that nothing but the definite act of submission—the experimental and bridge-burning leap—could effect the reconciliation he sought. It was late at night when he reached this decision; but, like the importunate widow of the Gospels, Patmore rushed from his hotel to the Jesuit monastery, and would be denied neither by rule nor padlock. Father Cardella, the learned and patient priest who had been his instructor, refused to permit the great step in this precipitate haste. But the neophyte made then and there his general confession; and two or three days later he was received into the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The first person to be apprised of this submission was an English lady then resident in Rome, Miss Marianne Caroline Byles, a convert and close friend of Cardinal Manning. "I had never before beheld so beautiful a personality," Coventry declared with his usual ardour, "and this beauty seemed to be the pure effulgence of Catholic sanctity." The world was soon to know her as Mary Patmore, the poet's second wife.
