tter class of priests,--a man of respectable character, with
literary proclivities, which had in his case the effect of keeping him
from vice on the one hand, and of deadening his spiritual sensibilities
on the other. To him, the religion he taught, and had himself been
taught, was sufficient for all necessities, and he could not understand
any one wanting more. When a man's mind has never been disturbed by the
question, it is no cause for wonder that he has never sought for the
answer.

That Father Nicholas would have listened to her, Doucebelle knew; for he
was by no means an unkind or disobliging man. But she had sense to
perceive that he was incapable of understanding her, and that his only
idea of dealing with such queries would be not to solve, but to suppress
them.

Doucebelle passed in mental review every person in the Castle: and every
one, in turn, she dismissed as unsuitable for her purpose. The other
chaplain of the Earl, Father Warner, was a stern, harsh man, of whom
she, in common with all the young people, was very much afraid; she
could not think of putting such queries to him. The chaplain of the
Countess, Father Elias, had just resigned his post, and his successor
had not yet been appointed. Master Aristoteles, the household
physician, was an excellent authority on the virtues of comfrey or
frogs' brains, but a very poor resource on a theological question. The
Earl was not at home. The Countess would be likely to enter into
Doucebelle's perplexities little better than Father Nicholas, and would
playfully chide her for entertaining them. All the young people were
too young except Sir John de Burgh and Hawise. Sir John had not an idea
beyond war, politics, and falconry; and Hawise was accustomed to decline
mental investigations altogether. So Doucebelle was shut up to her
thoughts and her Psalter. Perhaps she might have been worse situated.

On the 7th of February 1235, died Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, "the enemy of
all monks." He had not, however, by any means been the enemy of all
superstition. He was remarkably easy to take in by young women who had
sustained personal encounters with Satan, nuns who had been favoured
with apparitions of the Virgin, and monks to whom Saint Peter or Saint
Lawrence had made revelations. It is little wonder that he was
canonised, and perhaps not much that a touch of his bones, or a shred of
his chasuble, were asserted to be possessed of miraculous power. A