When other people lose all their prospects, they sigh, tie a heavy stone to their hopes, and sink them in the sea of forgetfulness.
A tenacious farmer does not do so; he keeps turning them over in his mind to see whether he cannot save a part, if he is not to have the whole.
And when the Bridge Farmer's anger had lost its edge, he again began to brood and plan.
But because it was a matter that concerned book-learning, his own wisdom did not satisfy him; so he resolved to go straight to the right shop and ask a priest's advice.
The one at Eynhofen he did not trust; not since that time long ago, when the priest had told him such barefaced lies about Greek.
But in Sintshausen, twelve miles off, there was a priest, the Reverend Joseph Shoebower, that one could put confidence in.
Oh, but he was a shrewd one; a deputy in the diet, three times as Catholic as the other "shepherds," and a hotheaded fighting-cock, who regularly chewed up Liberals with his salad and who set the king's Ministers dancing to the very maddest of tunes, until he finally got the best-paid post in the whole bishopric. To him our farmer went, for he would surely know some means of preventing such a robust churl as Matthew Fottner from being lost to the Church.
So he asked him whether you couldn't grease some one's palm,--the school at Freising, or the bishop, or some one.
"It is always a meritorious work," said the Reverend Shoebower, "when one invests his money for Catholic purposes; but in this case it would not do much good, for the certificate for admission to the university can only be got by an examination. At least as long as the civil power--I am sorry to say--still has the right to put in its oar in educational matters. But something else can be done, Bridge Farmer," he said, "if you are set on having Matt Fottner enter the ministry at all costs. There is a Collegium Germanicum in Rome, where German youths are trained by the Jesuits. They are very particular about faith, but as to education they close one eye in the interest of the faith."
"Hm," remarked the Bridge Farmer, "but I wonder if the masses that such a one reads, who's come all the way from Rome, have the same force."