"Shame on you, brother Correntian! are you a man?" cried Bero in wrath.
"You see how you start at an empty word! Ye feeble ones! Do you call the physician cruel who by one swift cut obviates future--nay eternal suffering? If any one had released me from the torment of sight and its myriad temptations while I was still slumbering in the cradle, I would have thanked him as my lifelong benefactor. However, fear nothing; I know well that no shedding of blood beseems us, and it was only an idea, suggested by the truest pity."
"You are a great man, Correntian, but fearful in your strength," said the Abbot, and the brethren agreed with a shudder.
But the little gnome leans unmoved and silent against his pillar; he feels no astonishment, no horror--he knows that there are many different growths in the Lord's garden; deadly poisonous plants by the side of wholesome and nutritious ones, and that each has its use and purpose. This brother Eusebius knows right well, for the hidden properties and relations of things are clear to his penetrating eye. He is the herbalist, the astronomer and the physician of the convent. He watches the still growth of roots and germs in the bosom of the earth as well as the course of the blood in the human body, and that of the stars in the immeasurable firmament, and in all he sees the same ordering, the same great inexorable law against which the creature for ever rebels, and which ever works out its own vengeance. But he says no more at present, for he sees that it would be in vain.
But Conrad Stiero would have no mistake as to his meaning,
"I say walls--they are the best security! Let Heaven and Hell fight for him, our walls are thick, and we will not let him go outside them."
The little man by the pillar folded his hands.
"Oh! human wit and human wisdom!" thought he.
"Allow me to say a few words," said Wyso, addressing the whole conclave, "and do not take what I say amiss. You are all dreamers, thrashing empty straw. The small thread of one's patience is easily broken when one has to listen to such idle talk on an empty stomach. What have we to do here with the Almighty and the devil? or which of them we may least offend? This is above all things a matter for the law, a trifle which it seems to me that you have all forgotten. If you have a mind to receive the child as a guest, and make a nursery of the old house, well and good, no one can prevent you; it is not forbidden either by canon law or by the rule of St. Benedict to give shelter to the homeless so long as they need it. But if you think of receiving the boy into the order--and your solemn talk seems to imply it--one of these days we shall find ourselves laid under ban and interdict, so that not even a thief on the gallows will ask absolution at our hands."
An uneasy movement ran through the conclave.