eating and for dressing. His doctrine
may be summed up in a word: he teaches self-renunciation. But he does it
in so kindly and affectionate a tone that the life he wishes his
penitents to submit to does not seem too bitter; his voice is so sweet
that the existence he describes seems almost sweet. Yet all that could
brighten it must be avoided; the least thing may have serious
consequences: "of little waxeth mickle."

Not a glance must be bestowed on the world; the young recluses must even
deny themselves the pleasure of looking out of the parlour windows. They
must bear in mind the example of Eve: "When thou lookest upon a man thou
art in Eve's case; thou lookest upon the apple. If any one had said to
Eve when she cast her eye upon it: 'Ah! Eve, turn thee away; thou
castest thine eyes upon thy death,' what would she have answered?--'My
dear master, thou art in the wrong, why dost thou find fault with me?
The apple which I look upon is forbidden me to eat, not to look
at.'--Thus would Eve quickly enough have answered. O my dear sisters,
truly Eve hath many daughters who imitate their mother, who answer in
this manner. But 'thinkest thou,' saith one, 'that I shall leap upon him
though I look at him?'--God knows, dear sisters, that a greater wonder
has happened. Eve, thy mother leaped after her eyes to the apple; from
the apple in Paradise down to the earth; from the earth to hell, where
she lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both,
and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. The
beginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often,
as is said, 'of little waxeth mickle.'"[338]

The temptation to look and talk out of the window was one of the
greatest with the poor anchoresses; not a few found it impossible to
resist it. Cut off from the changeable world, they could not help
feeling an interest in it, so captivating precisely because, unlike the
cellular life, it was ever changing. The authors of rules for recluses
insisted therefore very much upon this danger, and denounced such abuses
as Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx, reveals, as we have seen, so early as the
twelfth century: old women, talkative ones and newsbringers, sitting
before the window of the recluse, "and telling her tales, and feeding
her with vain news and scandal, and telling her how this monk or that
clerk or any other man looks and behaves."[339]

Most of the religious treatises in English t