"Let that tell you why!" said the Prior with severity. And without rising, so circumscribed was his chamber, he reached down the small wall-mirror, which he used when he shaved, and handed it to the Father Confessor. "Think you, would a countenance like that have any chance of being allowed into the ante-rooms of the Prime Minister?"
"I would disguise myself," said the priest.
The Prior smiled. "Yes," he said, "and like a sereno in plain clothes, look three times the monk you are with your frock upon you! No, no, Anselmo; Holy Church has need of you, but she does not require that you should throw your life away uselessly."
He motioned the Confessor to a seat, and passed him his snuff-box open, from which the dark monk took a pinch mechanically, his lips still working, like the sea after a storm, in a low continuous mutter of Latin curses.
"I have found my instruments," said the Prior. "They are within the walls of the Abbey of Montblanch at this moment. And we have just two months in which to do our business."
The Father Confessor, obeying the beckoning eyebrow of his superior, inclined his ear closer, and the Prior whispered into it for some minutes. As he proceeded, doubt, hope, expectation, certainty, joy, flitted across the monk's face. He clasped his hands as the Abbot finished.
"God in His Heaven defend His poor children and punish the transgressor!"
"Amen," said the Abbot, a little dryly; "and we must do what we can to assist Him upon the earth."