He received him in the Blue Room. The big Englishman burlied in and began without preliminaries: ‘I’m a Catholic, a Christian-Catholic.’ ‘Oh,’ said George. ‘You probably didn’t know that.’ ‘I don’t think I did,’ George conceded. ‘Or – wait. Maybe you did mention it, once before?’ ‘We can divorce, you know, but’s frowned on. And,’ Ergaste added, with almost furious vehemence, ‘and we eat our God. You know?’ ‘The bread and wine stuff?’ said George. ‘Of course I had heard about all that.’ Ergaste lowered at him, and then smiled a leonine smile that showed off all the central teeth including his four sharpest. ‘We devour our God weekly,’ he said, again. ‘We devour God every week,’ he clarified, in case George had thought he had said ‘weakly’. ‘That’s the kind of carnivorous religion mine is.’ ‘OK,’ said George. ‘Thing about eating,’ Ergaste went on, in hectoring mode. ‘It has changed. Yeah? We don’t need to do it for sustenance, now, what?
