the next act of the drama.

FOOTNOTES:

{2} The king crossed to Normandy the very next day, and it is possible
that this was the date of the sea scene mentioned above.

CHAPTER IV

THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE

Hugh knew well enough what the Chartreuse Chapter would say if the
English meant to have him, and so he began his preparations at once.
Other men fussed about fine copes, chasubles, and mitres, and dogged the
clerical tailors, or pottered about in goldsmiths' shops to get a grand
equipment of goblets. To him the approaching dignity was like a black
cloud to a sailor, or a forest of charging lances to the soldier under
arms. He fell hard to prayer and repentance, to meditation upon the
spiritual needs of his new duties, lest he should have holy oil on his
head and a dry and dirty conscience. He gave no time to the _menu_ of
the banquet, to the delicacies, the authorities, and the
lacquey-smoothed amenities of the new life. He was racked with misery at
the bare imagination of the fruitless trouble of palace business
exchanged for the fruitful quiet of his cell. He feared that psalms
would give way to tussles, holy reading to cackle, inward meditation to
ugly shadows, inward purity to outer nothingness. His words to the
brethren took a higher and a humbler tone, which surprised them, for
even they were used to see bishoprics looked upon as plums, and sought
with every device of dodgery. Yet here was a man who could keep his soul
unhurt and cure the hurts of others, yet whose cry was, "In my house is
neither bread nor clothing; make me not a ruler of the people." St.
Augustine's fierce words upon the Good Shepherd and the hireling were in
his mind. "The soul's lawful husband is God. Whoso seeks aught but God
from God is no chaste bride of God. See, brothers, if the wife loves her
husband because he is rich she is not chaste. She loves, not her
husband, but her husband's gold. For if she loves her husband she loves
him bare, she loves him beggared." So Hugh prepared his soul as for a
bridal with the coming bridegroom.

When the inevitable command came, more than three months after his first
election, he meekly set out for his duties at "the mount of the Lord,
not Lebanon,{3} but Lincoln." He was white in dress, white in face, but
radiant white within. He sat a horse without trappings, but with a roll
of fleece and clothes, his day and night gear. Around him pricked his
clergy upon their gold-button