Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/244

238 of the writer’s experience of the ordeal may be interesting and instructive.

When I was forced at length to acknowledge that I had lost all faith in my religious profession, I thought to avail myself of my position as superior to enter into secular life with more facility. I revealed my state of mind to several non-Catholic acquaintances—it would have been fatal to my plans and quite useless to reveal it to a Catholic—and they agreed that I must withdraw, after a short time for reflection: only one man, though he is one of the most prominent public men in London, thought that I should be justified in remaining at my post. I began, therefore, to make inquiries and preparations for a new departure. In the meantime I continued to fulfil my duty to the college conscientiously—as a matter of common honesty and in order to give no ground for subsequent calumny.

For the same reason I resolved to take no money from the institution, though I felt that I should have been justified in doing so to some extent. When the superior of a monastery with which I was connected left its walls, he took 50l. with him ‘as a temporary loan’: that circumstance did not excite any particular discussion, and certainly there was no question of prosecution for theft. Similarly, another friar ran away with about 200l. My own case, however, was of quite a different character, and would be treated with a very different policy. The two friars were not