The Chapel-bell tolls.
LUCIFER, starting. What is that bell for! Are you such asses As to keep up the fashion of midnight masses?
FRIAR CUTHBERT. It is only a poor unfortunate brother, Who is gifted with most miraculous powers Of getting up at all sorts of hours, And, by way of penance and Christian meekness, Of creeping silently out of his cell To take a pull at that hideous bell; So that all monks who are lying awake May murmur some kind of prayer for his sake, And adapted to his peculiar weakness!
FRIAR JOHN. From frailty and fall—
ALL. Good Lord, deliver us all!
FRIAR CUTHBERT. And before the bell for matins sounds, He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds, Flashing it into our sleepy eyes, Merely to say it is time to arise. But enough of that. Go on, if you please, With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys.
LUCIFER. Well, it finally came to pass That, half in fun and half in malice, One Sunday at Mass We put some poison into the chalice. But, either by accident or design, Peter Abelard kept away From the chapel that day, And a poor young friar, who in his stead Drank the sacramental wine, Fell on the steps of the altar, dead! But look! do you see at the window there That face, with a look of grief and despair, That ghastly face, as of one in pain?
MONKS. Who? where?
LUCIFER. As I spoke, it vanished away again.
FRIAR CUTHBERT. It is that nefarious Siebald the Refectorarius, That fellow is always playing the scout, Creeping and peeping and prowling about; And then he regales The Abbot with scandalous tales.