“No cooks! Thou fat wine-vat, what, didst thou think we ate our viands raw?”
“Heaven forbid!” the Abbot gasped. “But, truly, your sanctity’s experiences astound me! ’Tis all against the canons. And if they be thus, as you say, at their trenchers, may I ask, in all humbleness and humility, how your blessed friends are at their flagons?”
“Ah! Sir, good fellows enough my jolly comrades, but caring little for thy red and purple vintages, liking better the merry ale that autumn sends, and the honeyed mead, yet in their way as merry roysterers for the most part as though they were all Norman Abbots,” I said, glancing askance at him.
By this time the Prior was on his feet, as sober as could be, but apparently infinitely surprised and perplexed at what he saw and heard. He cogitated, and then he diffidently asked: “An it were not too presumptive, might I ask if your saintship knows the blessed Oswald?”
“Not I.”
“Nor yet the holy Sewall de Monteign?” he queried with a sigh—“once head of these halls and cells.”
“Never heard of him in my life.”
“Nor yet of Grindal? or Gerard of Bayeux? or the saintly Anselm, my predecessor in that chair you fill?” groaned the jolly confessor.
“I tell you, priest, I know none of them—never heard their names or aught of them till now.”
“Alas! alas!” quoth the monk, “then if none of these have won to heaven, if none of these are known to thee so newly thence, there can be but small hope for me!” And his fat round chin sank upon his ample chest, and he heaved a sigh that set the candles all a-flickering halfway down the table.