"Marvellous boy!" he exclaimed. "You came to us, a stranger, and we thought that we knew from whence you came, and believed that we should give to you out of our superfluity and teach you out of the stores of our wisdom. But now you give to us of your abundance and teach us by your wisdom so that we are fain to ask, 'Whence are you?' For it was not in the snows of the wild heath where you were picked up, nor between our humble convent-walls that you received such a divine revelation."
Donatus kissed his uncle's hand. "Oh father," he said softly, "I kiss your faithful and fatherly hand in all reverence, for it is the hand that has led me to that sacred fount whence I have drawn living waters for your refreshment. Nothing is my own, I have received everything from you, and to you I give it back, and whatever I am, that I am through you! I thank you, my father--I thank you, my brethren! To-day--on the eve of that sacred day--the day of my new birth in the Lord--let me offer you all in one word the thanks of a life-time."
And all the brethren--with the exception of that one who was always irreconcilable--crowded round him and grasped his hands affectionately. Aye! it was a rich and glorious harvest to the Lord that they were celebrating that day, and they were proud of it--proud of having brought up the boy so well--proud that they had all been so wise, and so good to him. Then the Abbot led him to the chapel that he might there make his last confession before the holy and solemn festival.
Long, long did Donatus kneel before the confessional, and the iron grating against which he pressed his brow was wet with his tears. For a secret sin had weighed upon his soul these three days past. "Oh father, father!" cried he from an oppressed heart, "I, your son, no longer appear before you pure as I did a few days since. Father! I dread to tell you. My eyes have drunk of the poison of woman's beauty and it courses through my veins like a consuming fire. Always--always--I see before me the light curling hair, the rosy cheeks, the white throat as I saw it when her robe fell back, when she took off the clasp--the whole lovely form and figure. Augustine speaks truly when he says, 'the eyes every day cast us into all sin and crime; what has been created that is more subtle than the eye?' My heart was pure, it harboured no thought but of God; but these eyes, subtle to betray me, have cast me into temptation, they have destroyed the peace of my soul, for even now they still bring the sinful image before my mind again and again. They paint it on the blue sky, on the pillars of the church, on my prayer-book--nay, on the altar-cloth. I see it wherever I turn my eyes, it comes between me and my prayers. Oh father, how dare I, with this snare in my soul, bow my head to receive the consecrating oil; will it not hiss and dry up as if it were poured on hot iron?"