"One thousand, Holy Father."
"I have spoken."
Then the Abbot motioned Annys to follow him, and proceeded to the chapel, where they discovered all the members of the monastery assembled. At the entrance, Annys took the oath of fidelity and then prostrated himself while the monks chanted in unison the seven Penitential Psalms.
It would have taken a brazen sinner indeed to remain unmoved during the touching service of receiving the excommunicated one back again into the fold. Annys was deeply stirred. He lay on the floor of the chapel, shaken by long-drawn sobs, while the exquisite modulations of the solemn chant rose and fell about him. In the dim religious light, the monks in their flowing robes, their pallid faces standing out like carved ivory against their black cowls, seemed as spectres from another world looking on the trial of a soul before the Great Judge.
How sure, how unfaltering, was the touch of Holy Church upon the penitent soul. With what fine intuition did the service bring to the soul of the evil-doer the sense of sin, and finally through the whole gamut of human emotions,—terror, faltering hope, faith, despair,—at last, through humiliation and renunciation, lift it with rapture to God.
At first the terror of the Lord's wrath is upon him:—
"O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger,
Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am withered away."
Then a calmer note is struck, one of confession:—