“I merely put the question,” returned he, “to apprize you that you might, without breaking the fast, take a glass or so in the morning, or whenever you felt inclined for a drop; and that is always something in the way of supporting nature. Here is the decision at the same place, no. 57: ‘May one, without breaking the fast, drink wine at any hour he pleases, and even in a large quantity? Yes, he may: and a dram of hippocrass too.’[[138]] I had no recollection of the hippocrass,” said the monk; “I must take a note of that in my memorandum-book.”
“He must be a nice man, this Escobar,” observed I.
“Oh! everybody likes him,” rejoined the father; “he has such delightful questions! Only observe this one in the same place, no. 38: ‘If a man doubt whether he is twenty-one years old, is he obliged to fast?[[139]] No. But suppose I were to be twenty-one to-night an hour after midnight, and to-morrow were the fast, would I be obliged to fast to-morrow? No; for you were at liberty to eat as much as you pleased for an hour after midnight, not being till then fully twenty-one; and therefore having a right to break the fast-day, you are not obliged to keep it.’”
“Well, that is vastly entertaining!” cried I.
“Oh,” rejoined the father, “it is impossible to tear one’s self away from the book: I spend whole days and nights in reading it; in fact, I do nothing else.”
The worthy monk, perceiving that I was interested, was quite delighted, and went on with his quotations. “Now,” said he, “for a taste of Filiutius, one of the four-and-twenty Jesuits: ‘Is a man who has exhausted himself any way—by profligacy, for example[[140]]—obliged to fast? By no means. But if he has exhausted himself expressly to procure a dispensation from fasting, will he be held obliged? He will not, even though he should have had that design.’ There now! would you have believed that?”
“Indeed, good father, I do not believe it yet,” said I. “What! is it no sin for a man not to fast when he has it in his power? And is it allowable to court occasions of committing sin, or rather, are we not bound to shun them? That would be easy enough, surely.”
“Not always so,” he replied; “that is just as it may happen.”
“Happen, how?” cried I.
“Oho!” rejoined the monk, “so you think that if a person experience some inconvenience in avoiding the occasions of sin, he is still bound to do so? Not so thinks Father Bauny. ‘Absolution,’ says he, ‘is not to be refused to such as continue in the proximate occasions of sin,[[141]] if they are so situated that they cannot give them up without becoming the common talk of the world, or subjecting themselves to personal inconvenience.’”