“You don’t do anything, you monks.  You are good for nothing but eating and drinking.  Is that the way to save one’s soul?  Only think, while you sit here in peace, eat and drink and dream of beatitude, your neighbours are perishing and going to hell.  You should see what is going on in the town!  Some are dying of hunger, others, not knowing what to do with their gold, sink into profligacy and perish like flies stuck in honey.  There is no faith, no truth in men.  Whose task is it to save them?  Whose work is it to preach to them?  It is not for me, drunk from morning till night as I am.  Can a meek spirit, a loving heart, and faith in God have been given you for you to sit here within four walls doing nothing?”

The townsman’s drunken words were insolent and unseemly, but they had a strange effect upon the Father Superior.  The old man exchanged glances with his monks, turned pale, and said: 

“My brothers, he speaks the truth, you know.  Indeed, poor people in their weakness and lack of understanding are perishing in vice and infidelity, while we do not move, as though it did not concern us.  Why should I not go and remind them of the Christ whom they have forgotten?”

The townsman’s words had carried the old man away.  The next day he took his staff, said farewell to the brotherhood, and set off for the town.  And the monks were left without music, and without his speeches and verses.  They spent a month drearily, then a second, but the old man did not come back.  At last after three months had passed the familiar tap of his staff was heard.  The monks flew to meet him and showered questions upon him, but instead of being delighted to see them he wept bitterly and did not utter a word.  The monks noticed that he looked greatly aged and had grown thinner; his face looked exhausted and wore an expression of profound sadness, and when he wept he had the air of a man who has been outraged.

The monks fell to weeping too, and began with sympathy asking him why he was weeping, why his face was so gloomy, but he locked himself in his cell without uttering a word.  For seven days he sat in his cell, eating and drinking nothing, weeping and not playing on his organ.  To knocking at his door and to the entreaties of the monks to come out and share his grief with them he replied with unbroken silence.

At last he came out.  Gathering all the monks around him, with a tear-stained face and with an expression of grief and indignation, he began telling them of what had befallen him during those three months.  His voice was calm and his eyes were smiling while he described his journey from the monastery to the town.  On the road, he told them, the birds sang to him, the brooks gurgled, and sweet youthful hopes agitated his soul; he marched on and felt like a soldier going to battle and confident of victory; he walked on dreaming, and composed poems and hymns, and reached the end of his journey without noticing it.