A little Protestant in Rome

"A Little Protestant in Rome" by Eglanton Thorne is a children's religious novel written in the late 19th century. It follows five-year-old Paul Bernard, a candid, devout Protestant in Rome, whose simple faith unsettles ritual, consoles the sorrowful, and nudges estranged adults toward forgiveness. The story centers on Paul, his uneasy mother Clarice, their Scotch nurse Janet, and Catholic acquaintances, as questions of confession, grace, and family reconciliation unfold against Rome’s splendors. The opening of the novel places Paul and his mother in Rome, where his plain talk about prayer and God contrasts with Catholic friends’ devotion to shrines and priests. He befriends a glamorous but despairing stranger, Mademoiselle Grand, and—after Janet refuses her gift—later stumbles on her about to leap from the Pincio; his childlike counsel sends her home, and a grateful letter soon arrives from the Scottish Highlands. Clarice, burdened by a broken marriage and tempted by the confessional, begins to seek direct forgiveness from God, while Paul adds a daily prayer for the father he has never seen. Taken by a friend to the Vatican, Paul slips into the gardens, glimpses the Pope, and, confusing “Holy Father” with God, draws a gentle reply about the pure in heart. In the Protestant Cemetery he meets a man with a St. Bernard dog who, deeply moved, asks a kiss “for your father”—the reader sees he is Paul’s estranged parent. When Clarice later visits the Coliseum by moonlight, feverish Paul secretly sets out to find it, collapses on church steps, and is discovered by the same man’s dog; the father carries him home, summons a doctor, and prepares to send word to the hotel—leaving reconciliation poised as the story’s next step. (This is an automatically generated summary.)