meaning and earnestness that were felt even by the most drowsy and leaden of his flock.  It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during the access of a great agony.  The effect is entirely involuntary, and often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguish or conflict of which the language itself gives no expression.

Never were the long-drawn intonations of the chants and prayers of the Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superior that night breathed into them.  They seemed to wail, to supplicate, to combat, to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish, and anon to rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and the monks quailed and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings of coming wrath and judgment.

In the evening exhortation, which it had been the Superior’s custom to add to the prayers of the vesper-hour, he dwelt with a terrible and ghastly eloquence on the loss of the soul.

“Brethren,” he said, “believe me, the very first hour of a damned spirit in hell will outweigh all the prosperities of the most prosperous life.  If you could gain the whole world, that one hour of hell would outweigh it all; how much more such miserable, pitiful scraps and fragments of the world as they gain who for the sake of a little fleshly ease neglect the duties of a holy profession!  There is a broad way to hell through a convent, my brothers, where miserable wretches go who have neither the spirit to serve the Devil wholly, nor the patience to serve God; there be many shaven crowns that gnash their teeth in hell to-night,—­many a monk’s robe is burning on its owner in living fire, and the devils call him a fool for choosing to be damned in so hard a way.  ’Could you not come here by some easier road than a cloister?’ they ask.  ’If you must sell your soul, why did you not get something for it?’ Brethren, there be devils waiting for some of us; they are laughing at your paltry shifts and evasions, at your efforts to make things easy,—­for they know how it will all end at last.  Rouse yourselves!  Awake!  Salvation is no easy matter,—­nothing to be got between sleeping and waking.  Watch, pray, scourge the flesh, fast, weep, bow down in sackcloth, mingle your bread with ashes, if by any means ye may escape the everlasting fire!”

“Bless me!” said Father Anselmo, when the services were over, casting a half-scared glance after the retreating figure of the Superior as he left the chapel, and drawing a long breath; “it’s enough to make one sweat to hear him go on.  What has come over him?  Anyhow, I’ll give myself a hundred lashes this very night:  something must be done.”

“Well,” said another, “I confess I did hide a cold wing of fowl in the sleeve of my gown last fast-day.  My old aunt gave it to me, and I was forced to take it for relation’s sake; but I’ll do so no more, as I’m a living sinner.  I’ll do a penance this very night.”