Darkness is the rule.
The most ferocious beasts are beasts which are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality.
Oh! how wicked people are! By order of the king signifies to-day, by order of the revolution. One no longer knows what is due to the living or to the dead.
A holy death is prohibited.
Burial is a civil matter.
This is horrible. Saint Leo II.
wrote two special letters, one to Pierre Notaire, the other to the king of the Visigoths, for the purpose of combating and rejecting, in questions touching the dead, the authority of the exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor.
Gauthier, Bishop of Chalons, held his own in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient magistracy agreed with him.
In former times we had voices in the chapter, even on matters of the day.
The Abbot of Citeaux, the general of the order, was councillor by right of birth to the parliament of Burgundy.
We do what we please with our dead. Is not the body of Saint Benoit himself in France, in the abbey of Fleury, called Saint Benoit-sur-Loire, although he died in Italy at Mont-Cassin, on Saturday, the 21st of the month of March, of the year 543?
All this is incontestable.
I abhor psalm-singers, I hate priors, I execrate heretics, but I should detest yet more any one who should maintain the contrary.
One has only to read Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus, Maurolics, and Dom Luc d'Achery."
The prioress took breath, then turned to Fauchelevent.
"Is it settled, Father Fauvent?"
"It is settled, reverend Mother."
"We may depend on you?"
"I will obey."
"That is well."