, word, action, outlook and position, the substantial figure of
a man with eminent nose, bushy brows and clear-flashing eyes, his
russet beard growing daily grayer, is visible, engaged in true
governing of men. It is beautiful how the chrysalis governing-soul,
shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true
royal soul! Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious feeling,
without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and what
others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an honest pity to
encourage the humblest. Withal there is a noble reticence in this Lord
Abbot: much vain unreason he hears; lays up without response. He is
not there to expect reason and nobleness of others; he is there to
give them of his own reason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as
we said, who can suffer from them, and for them; bear the burden their
poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under; and, in virtue of _being_
their servant, govern them, lead them out of weakness into strength,
out of defeat into victory!

* * * * *

One of the first Herculean Labours Abbot Samson undertook, or the very
first, was to institute a strenuous review and radical reform of his
economics. It is the first labour of every governing man, from
_Paterfamilias_ to _Dominus Rex_. To get the rain thatched out from
you is the preliminary of whatever farther, in the way of speculation
or of action, you may mean to do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw,
had become empty, filled with deficit and wind. To see his
account-books clear, be delivered from those ravening flights of Jew
and Christian creditors, pouncing on him like obscene harpies wherever
he showed face, was a necessity for Abbot Samson.

On the morrow after his instalment he brings in a load of money-bonds,
all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other Convent Seal:
frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless confusion of Convent finance.
There they are;--but there at least they all are; all that shall be of
them. Our Lord Abbot demands that all the official seals in use among
us be now produced and delivered to him. Three-and-thirty seals turn
up; are straightway broken, and shall seal no more: the Abbot only,
and those duly authorised by him shall seal any bond. There are but
two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income,
increase of thrift in laying it out. With iron energy, in slow but
steady undeviating perseverance,