e
contrives to gain his point.

* * * * *

Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail, ever deeper murmurs,
new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause, some drop
making the cup run over, they burst into open mutiny: the Cellarer
will not obey, prefers arrest on bread-and-water to obeying; the Monks
thereupon strike work; refuse to do the regular chanting of the day,
at least the younger part of them with loud clamour and uproar
refuse:--Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence, acting only
by messengers: the awful report circulates through St. Edmundsbury
that the Abbot is in danger of being murdered by the Monks with their
knives! How wilt thou appease this, Abbot Samson! Return; for the
Monastery seems near catching fire!

Abbot Samson returns; sits in his _Talamus_, or inner room, hurls out
a bolt or two of excommunication: lo, one disobedient Monk sits in
limbo, excommunicated, with foot-shackles on him, all day; and three
more our Abbot has gyved 'with the lesser sentence, to strike fear
into the others'! Let the others think with whom they have to do. The
others think; and fear enters into them. 'On the morrow morning we
decide on humbling ourselves before the Abbot, by word and gesture, in
order to mitigate his mind. And so accordingly was done. He, on the
other side, replying with much humility, yet always alleging his own
justice and turning the blame on us, when he saw that we were
conquered, became himself conquered. And bursting into tears,
_perfusus lachrymis_, he swore that he had never grieved so much for
anything in the world as for this, first on his own account, and then
secondly and chiefly for the public scandal which had gone abroad,
that St. Edmund's Monks were going to kill their Abbot. And when he
had narrated how he went away on purpose till his anger should cool,
repeating this word of the philosopher, "I would have taken vengeance
on thee, had not I been angry," he arose weeping, and embraced each
and all of us with the kiss of peace. He wept; we all wept:'[15]--what
a picture! Behave better, ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such
an Abbot; or know at least that ye must and shall obey him.

* * * * *

Worn down in this manner, with incessant toil and tribulation, Abbot
Samson had a sore time of it; his grizzled hair and beard grew daily
grayer. Those Jews, in the first four years, had 'visibly emacia