an, had also the grace given to me to drive the diseased
sheep from the flock.

Long was I on the track of him and his worldly, heathenish, sinful,
ungodly, yea God-blaspheming doings; his guilty conscience had rightly
boded this. Step by step I had him watched by Italian brethren, full of
godly zeal, without his observing it. The most pious of them, Brother
Ignatius of Spoletum, succeeded in winning his confidence--for stupidly
unsuspicious are they--these barbarians--through often allowing him to
entertain him with harp playing, Irenaeus begged from him one day some
ink powder from his store, as he had used up his appointed portion, and
from the "Head of the Pharisees"--thus the shameless sinner termed his
abbot and chief shepherd--could not obtain fresh supplies, without
delivering over what he had written with the former supply.

Brother Ignatius at once, as was his pious obligation, told all to me,
his abbot. But the ink powder he gave to him, with that wisdom of the
serpent which is well pleasing to God in his priests.

Soon thereafter the sinner set out again upon one of those secret
expeditions which have ever been his wont, remaining out the whole
night when some errand had allowed him to escape from the monastery. I
never forbade him to go out, for I hoped through one of these secret
expeditions, most easily to discover his hidden doings. I sent, spies
after him every time; but every time he suddenly and mysteriously
disappeared among the wooded crags along the shore.

This time I myself sent him out, and as soon as he had left the
monastery court I at once made a most rigorous search through the whole
of his cell.

There at last I found, after much labour, these blasphemous pages,
written very small, in his accursed graceful handwriting, and artfully
hidden in a crevice between two stone slabs of the floor.

I took the devil's work with me, and read and read, with growing
horror. So much sin, so much worldliness, so much heathenish delight in
fighting and singing, in drinking and carnal love, so much, finally, of
doubt, of unbelief, of naked blasphemy, had, under the roof of the holy
Columban, under my pastoral staff, grown up, and been written out!

Abhorrence seized upon me, and holy indignation.

Forthwith I summoned the Italian brethren to special secret council and
judgment. I pointed out to them the deadly poison of these writings,
which indeed were full of the seven deadly sins; and the unanimo