Rouse yourselves! Awake! Salvation is no
easy matter,--nothing to be got between sleeping and waking. Watch,
pray, scourge the flesh, fast, weep, bow down in sackcloth, mingle your
bread with ashes, if by any means ye may escape the everlasting fire!"
"Bless me!" said Father Anselmo, when the services were over, casting
a half-scared glance after the retreating figure of the Superior as he
left the chapel, and drawing a long breath; "it's enough to make one
sweat to hear him go on. What has come over him? Anyhow, I'll give
myself a hundred lashes this very night: something must be done."
"Well," said another, "I confess I did hide a cold wing of fowl in the
sleeve of my gown last fast-day. My old aunt gave it to me, and I was
forced to take it for relation's sake; but I'll do so no more, as I'm a
living sinner. I'll do a penance this very night."
Father Johannes stood under one of the arches that looked into the
gloomy garden, and, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and his
cold, glittering eye fixed stealthily now on one and now on another,
listened with an ill-disguised sneer to these hasty evidences of fear
and remorse in the monks, as they thronged the corridor on the way to
their cells. Suddenly turning to a young brother who had lately joined
the convent, he said to him,--
"And what of the pretty Clarice, my brother?"
The blood flushed deep into the pale cheek of the young monk, and his
frame shook with some interior emotion, as he answered,--
"She is recovering.
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