st of all, expose himself to the
scoffing eye of a triumphant enemy. Such were the motives that now came
to his aid, while as yet the whole of his inner nature rebelled at the
thought that he must tear up by the roots and wholly extirpate this love
that seemed to have sent its fine fibres through every nerve of his
being. "No!" he said to himself, with a fierce interior rebellion,
"_that_ I will not do! Right or wrong, come heaven, come hell, I _will_
love her; and if lost I must be, lost I will be!" And while this
determination lasted, prayer seemed to him a mockery. He dared not pray
alone now, when most he needed prayer; but he moved forward with dignity
towards the convent-chapel to lead the vesper devotions of his brethren.
Outwardly he was calm and rigid as a statue; but as he commenced the
service, his utterance had a terrible meaning and earnestness that were
felt even by the most drowsy and leaden of his flock. It is singular
how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body,
sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during
the access of a great agony. The effect is entirely involuntary, and
often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one
sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense
vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguish or conflict
of which the language itself gives no expression.

Never were the long-drawn intonations of the chants and prayers of the
Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superior that
night breathed into them. They seemed to wail, to supplicate, to combat,
to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish, and anon to
rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and the monks quailed
and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings of coming wrath and
judgment.

In the evening exhortation, which it had been the Superior's custom to
add to the prayers of the vesper-hour, he dwelt with a terrible and
ghastly eloquence on the loss of the soul.

"Brethren," he said, "believe me, the very first hour of a damned spirit
in hell will outweigh all the prosperities of the most prosperous life.
If you could gain the whole world, that one hour of hell would outweigh
it all; how much more such miserable, pitiful scraps and fragments of
the world as they gain who for the sake of a little fleshly ease neglect
the duties of a holy profession! There is a broad way to hell