How blessed is such
watchfulness!"
"The Devil take him!" said Father Anselmo, suddenly thrown off his
guard; but checking himself, he added, confusedly,--"I mean"--
"I understand you, brother," said Father Johannes; "it is a motion of
the old nature not yet entirely subdued. A little more of the discipline
of the lower vaults, which you have found so precious, will set all that
right."
"You would not inform against me?" said Father Anselmo, with an
expression of alarm.
"It would be my duty, I suppose," said Father Johannes, with a sigh;
"but, sinner that I am, I never could bring my mind to such proceedings
with the vigor of our blessed father. Had I been Superior of the
convent, as was talked of, bow differently might things have proceeded!
I should have erred by a sinful laxness. How fortunate that it was he,
instead of such a miserable sinner as myself!"
"Well, tell me, then, Father Johannes,--for your eyes are shrewd as a
lynx's,--is our good Superior so perfect as he seems? or does he have
his little private comforts sometimes, like the rest of us? Nobody,
you know, can stand it to be always on the top round of the ladder to
Paradise. For my part, between you and me, I never believed all that
story they read to us so often about Saint Simon Stylites, who passed so
many years on the top of a pillar and never came down.
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