Most of them were conscious of living but a
shabby, shambling, dissembling life, evading in every possible way the
efforts of their Superior to bring them up to the requirements of their
profession; and therefore, when these words were bolted out among them
with such a glowing intensity, every one of them began mentally feeling
for the key of his own private and interior skeleton-closet, and
wondering which of their ghastly occupants was coming to light now.
Father Johannes alone was unmoved, because he had long since ceased to
have a conscience. A throb of moral pulsation had for years been an
impossibility to the dried and hardened fibre of his inner nature. He
was one of those real, genuine, thorough unbelievers in all religion and
all faith and all spirituality, whose unbelief grows only more callous
by the constant handling of sacred things. Ambition was the ruling
motive of his life, and every faculty was sharpened into such
acuteness under its action that his penetration seemed at times almost
preternatural.
While he stood with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon his breast,
listening to the burning words which remorse and despair wrung from his
Superior, he was calmly and warily studying to see what could be made of
the evident interior conflict that convulsed him.
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