But many another grave and noble face is visible among the sombre circle in the light of the low-burning tapers, and with them many dry, hard and angular ones--as the same soil may bear very different fruits. There sits Bero, the oldest of the brethren, a modest and enlightened man, but of the severest principles; he has already been privately chosen to be the successor of Abbot Conrad I. when the old man should be gathered to the Holy Fathers of the Church. There is Conrad, surnamed Stiero or the bull, to distinguish him from Conrad the Abbot and Conrad of Ramüss; a man worthy of his surname,--a bull with a thick neck, and a broad, angular forehead moulded much as the heathen figured that Jupiter Ammon whom the Church overthrew after such a severe and bloody struggle. He is a man of no subtlety, but a strong bulwark of the faith and of the convent. So long as Conrad the Bull is there, no enemy will venture near, for his fist and his wrathful temper are everywhere known and none would brave them without good cause. There is brother Engelbert, the painter, who writes the exquisite illuminated manuscripts, Candidus the precentor, Porphyrius the sculptor, who chisels out the crosses and tombstones of the deceased brethren, Cyriacus, the Latin--and many more; Josephus, too, the lean brother-carpenter, sits modestly in the background little dreaming that his next task will be to make--an infant's cradle.
The Abbot finished his melancholy tale and ended with the words,
"You see, my brethren, the surges of the wicked world, rolling blindly on, have cast a young life on our sheltering shore. Yet, let us not say blindly--no, it is doubtless through some high purpose that this child has been brought to our house on the very anniversary of our founder's day. I have called you all together to take counsel with you as to whether we shall take him in or cast him out on the wild ocean of life?" "Take him in! take him in!" the majority of the brethren hastily exclaimed; but the sinister Correntian said, "Stay."
The brethren looked at him in surprise.
"If our venerable father, the Abbot, wishes to hear our opinion he may perhaps listen to my warning; reverend father, do not do it--my Brethren, do not receive this child within your walls."
The brethren muttered indignantly to each other, but he went on undisturbed. "It is accursed--it will bring the curse under our roof."
"A poor, innocent child!" murmured the circle of monks.
"Innocent or no it must expiate the sins of its parents, for even the mother is not free from guilt. She revelled in the dazzling levity of worldly joys, she consented so long to the courting attentions of the playmate of her youth that she excited her husband's jealousy, and who knows--if things had gone so far--how much farther--"
"Be silent!" thundered out a clear full voice. "Do not dare to calumniate the dead; her brother still lives to avenge her." Conrad of Ramüss stood before him with his fist raised and his lips pale and trembling. "I knew that chaste and lofty spirit as well as I know my own--she is dead--she died like a saint, and no stain shall come near her so long as my eyes are open and have tears to weep for her."
The scowling monk looked at him with a calm, cold, piercing gaze.