N.B.—If we had anything they especially wanted, they would take it from us, as they had (so they said) noticed us breaking the rule; and of course we dared not murmur, as that would be transgressing our vow of holy poverty.
The last two of the forty-nine rules are as follows:
Rule 48.—To read over these observances each day, with the intention of making them known to our Superior at the close of each week.
Penance.—To write out the whole of these forty-nine observances at recreation.
Rule 49.—In confessing our breaches of these observances to state them thus, e.g.: “On Sunday, I transgressed observance ⸺ by secretly feeling annoyed at being told to do such and such a thing. Jesus only.—‘They shall go from strength to strength, until they all appear before God in.…’”
These forty-nine observances (with their penances) were given to us by the abbot, and written out for us by him, with about forty-nine others. The Superiors being above the rule, there is no occasion for them to keep them, though they are very, very strict in seeing that their subjects do so, and were always dropping down on us at every nook and corner, and making out that we had broken them, when all the time we were trying our best to keep them.
We were the slaves; they were the taskmasters, and very hard ones too.