nichee. That last
one, involving the pornographic French novel so scrofulous and wicked.
How could it failed to have snared its prey? Especially, when Fray
Ambrose had spent such sleepless nights, working out his plot in great
detail?

Brother Ambrose allowed himself an inward chortle, as he paced along the
portico, recollecting how close to success the scheme had come. The book
had had to be read first (or re-read, rather) by Ambrose to determine
just which chapter would be most apt to damn a soul with concupiscent
suggestion. Gray paper with blunt type, the whole book had been easy
enough to grasp for that matter--what with the words so badly spelled
out. The cuckoldry tales of Boccaccio and that gay old archpriest, Juan
Ruiz de Hita, what dry reading they seemed by comparison--almost like
decretals.

As if by misadventure, Brother Ambrose had left the book in Lorenzo's
cell, the pages doubled down at the woeful sixteenth print. Ah, there
had been a passage! Simply glancing at it, you groveled hand and foot in
Belial's grip.

But, that twice-cursed Lorenzo must have had the devil's luck that day.
A breeze sprang up to flip the volume closed; and the monk, not knowing
the book's owner and espying only its name, had handed it over to the
Prior who had promptly turned the monastery upside down in search of
further such adulterous contraband!

Worse fortune followed. The next day, Brother Lorenzo had come down with
a temporary stroke of blindness--it lasted only a week; but even so, for
seven days Ambrose had been forced to labor in his stead in the drafty
library, copying boresome scrolls in a light scarcely less dim than
moonlight. Worse still, the Prior had found mistakes: letters dropped,
transposed (Latin was so bothersomely regular; compared to the vulgar
tongue). For what he called such "inexcusable slovenliness," the Prior
had imposed a penance of bread and water and extra toil.

_Slovenliness!_ Why didn't the Prior--was he blind, too?--notice the
deadly sins that were each day so neatly practised by Brother Lorenzo?
They went unpunished. Probably, God's Angel would even be found to have
been asleep when Judgment Day came around and Lorenzo would slip into
Heaven by a wink, as one might say.

Obviously, there was no justice, except such as man would make himself,
Brother Ambrose had at last decided.

_Ave Maria, plena gratia._

Now at last, he was alone in his cell, free finally from the unendurable
(so