“Very certain, friend,” said Gerhardt, smiling. “Is not the existence of Agnes answer enough to that?”
“Oh, but you might have run away,” said Isel, whose convictions on most subjects were of rather a hazy order. “There are monks that do, and priests too: or if they don’t forsake their Order, they don’t behave like it. Why, just look at Reinbald the Chaplain—who’d ever take him for a priest, with his long curls and his silken robes, and ruffling up his hair to hide the tonsure?”
“Ay, there are men who are ashamed of nothing so much as of the cross which their Master bore for them,” admitted Gerhardt sorrowfully. “And at times it looks as if the lighter the cross be, the less ready they are to carry it. There be who would face a drawn sword more willingly than a scornful laugh.”
“Well, we none of us like to be laughed at.”
“True. But he who denies his faith through the mockery of Herod’s soldiers, how shall he bear the scourging in Pilate’s hall?”
“Well, I’m none so fond of neither of ’em,” said Isel, taking down a ham.
“It is only women who can’t stand being touched,” commented Haimet rather disdainfully. “But you are out there, Gerard: it is a disgrace to be laughed at, and disgrace is ever worse to a true man than pain.”
“Why should it be disgrace, if I am in the right?” answered Gerhardt. “If I do evil, and refuse to own it, that is disgrace, if you will; but if I do well, or speak truth, and stand by it, what cause have I to be ashamed?”
“But if men believe that you have done ill, is that no disgrace?”
“If they believe it on false witness, the disgrace is equally false. ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, and shall say all evil against you, lying, for My sake.’ Those are His words who bore all shame for us.”