engender spiritual pride, and avoiding ourselves the temptation of falling into that modest facility of opinion, whereby our office is lessened and our person (were that of consequence) rendered less important in the eyes of the community over which we preside.'
Notwithstanding the high notions which, as a rigid Catholic, Father Eustace entertained of the sacrament of confession as his church calls it, there was some danger that a sense of the ridiculous might have stolen on him, when he heard his superior, with such simple cunning, lay out a little plan for availing himself of the sub-prior's wisdom and experience, while he should take the whole credit to himself. Yet his conscience immediately told him that he was right.
'I should have thought more,' he reflected, 'of the spiritual superior and less of the individual. I should have spread my mantle over the frailties of my spiritual father, and done what I might to support his character, and, of course, to extend his utility among the brethren as well as with others. The abbot cannot be humbled but what the community must be humbled in his person. Her boast is that over all her children, especially over those called to places of distinction, she can diffuse those gifts which are necessary to render them illustrious.'
Actuated by these sentiments, Father Eustace frankly assented to the charge which his superior, even in that moment of authority, had rather intimated than made, and signified his humble acquiescence in any mode of communicating his counsel which might be most agreeable to the lord abbot, and might best remove from himself all temptation to glory in his own wisdom. He then prayed the reverend father to assign him such penance as might best suit his offence, intimating, at the same time, that he had already fasted the whole day.
'And it is that I complain of,' answered the abbot, instead of giving him credit for his abstinence; 'it is these very penances, fasts, and vigils, of which we complain; as tending only to generate airs and fumes of vanity, which, ascending from the stomach into the head, do but puff us up with vain-glory and self-opinion. It is meet and beseeming that novices should undergo fasts and vigils;
