ng again towards debt
and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep
our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to
see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us: Was
the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very
Townsfolk know it: _subsannatio et derisio sumus,_ we have
become a laughingstock to mankind. The Norfolk barrator
and paltener!

And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere
economic department, how much in more complex ones, in spiritual
ones perhaps! He wears a stern calm face; raging and gnashing
teeth, _fremens_ and _frendens,_ many times, in the secret of his
mind. Withal, however, there is noble slow perseverance in him;
a strength of 'subdued rage' calculated to subdue most things:
always, in the long-run, he 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with loud clamour and uproar refuse:--Abbot Samson has withdrawn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 _Thalamus_ 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,
a