t Berno, therefore, with the consent and
assistance of the Counts of Berg, proposed to build a new convent
down in the valley, where already, on a pleasant meadow-land, stood a
chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

"When the monks were called together to consider of the precise spot
where the edifice should stand, it was found that they could by no
means agree about it; some thought it should be built at the northern
entrance of the valley, others that it should be at the foot of the
castle-hill; others, again, that it should be immediately on the
banks of the Dhun. In this dilemma, Abbot Berno, according to the
narratives of the monks, proposed what seems a curious method of
coming to a decision.

"Modern frivolity feels tempted to giggle when it hears that the
animal always in especial favour with the monks was the ass. His
simplicity of manners, humility of carriage, and usually taciturn
habits,--the sign of the cross which he bears on his back--the manner
in which he hangs his head, as the rules of most orders command the
pious brethren themselves to do,--the patience with which he submits
to discipline,--all this naturally recommended him to these devout
recluses. They were even ready, it seems, to regard him as a kind of
oracle in difficult cases.

"It was, we may recollect, not merely the spirit of monasticism, but
the spirit of all those ages, to see in what we call trivial chances
the ordination of a higher power. Do we not find, in the history of
Nurnberg, that in the fourteenth century, two hundred years after the
building of Altenberg convent, a worthy and respected burgher of that
city, one Berthold Tucher, of the renowned family of that name,
wishing to know whether it was the will of God that he should remain
in the world and marry again, or take holy vows and devote himself
to the monastic life did, after praying devoutly in the little chapel
in his house, 'at the corner of the Milk Market, there where you turn
into Dog Alley,' resolve to ascertain the Divine pleasure by the
simple method of tossing up a halfpenny; three times did he toss it,
and three times did it come up heads, and thereupon he accepted the
oracle, and went directly and fetched himself a wife.

"Even so did the monks of Altenberg now resolve to devolve upon t