winnowing-machine in human
elections can be of avail? We cannot get along without soul; we stick
fast, the mournfulest spectacle; and salt itself will not save us!

* * * * *

On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set forth; or rather
our Prior and Eleven; for Samson, as general servant of the party, has
to linger, settling many things. At length he too gets upon the road;
and, 'carrying the sealed Paper in a leather pouch hung round his
neck; and _froccum bajulans in ulnis_' (thanks to thee, Bozzy
Jocelin), 'his frock-skirts looped over his elbow,' showing
substantial stern-works, tramps stoutly along. Away across the Heath,
not yet of Newmarket and horse-jockeying; across your Fleam-dike and
Devil's-dike, no longer useful as a Mercian East-Anglian boundary or
bulwark: continually towards Waltham, and the Bishop of Winchester's
House there, for his Majesty is in that. Brother Samson, as
purse-bearer, has the reckoning always, when there is one, to pay;
'delays are numerous,' progress none of the swiftest.

But, in the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her
birthtime, what gossiping, what babbling, what dreaming of dreams! The
secret of the Three our electoral elders alone know: some Abbot we
shall have to govern us; but which Abbot, oh, which! One Monk discerns
in a vision of the night-watches, that we shall get an Abbot of our
own body, without needing to demur: a prophet appeared to him clad
all in white, and said, "Ye shall have one of yours, and he will rage
among you like a wolf, _saeviet ut lupus_." Verily!--then which of
ours? Another Monk now dreams: he has seen clearly which; a certain
Figure taller by head and shoulders than the other two, dressed in alb
and _pallium_, and with the attitude of one about to fight;--which
tall Figure a wise Editor would rather not name at this stage of the
business! Enough that the vision is true: that Saint Edmund himself,
pale and awful, seemed to rise from his Shrine, with naked feet, and
say audibly, "He, _ille_, shall veil my feet;" which part of the
vision also proves true. Such guessing, visioning, dim perscrutation
of the momentous future: the very clothmakers, old women, all
townsfolk speak of it, 'and more than once it is reported in St.
Edmundsbury, This one is elected; and then, This one, and That other.'
Who knows?

* * * * *

But now, sure enough, at Waltham 'on the Second