Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/250

244 astonishment of the little town, the representative of law and order. The interview was held with my friend, for I was absent, at Father David’s request. Afterwards we proceeded to the partition of the books, which was satisfactorily accomplished; the instrument was referred to the donor, who adjudged it to me. The next day, wearied to death and alarmed at the attitude the friars had shown, I returned the small sum of money I had taken for travelling expenses. Thus I narrowly escaped an ignominious position which would have increased a thousand-fold the difficulty of entering upon a new career.

Then came the painful desertion of all my late co-religionists. Even relatives, some to whom I was deeply attached, wrote harsh and bitter letters to me. I could not blame them; they were taught, as a matter of religious duty, to regard a secession in a moral light, not as a change of convictions. The following letter which I received from a friend at Forest Gate will serve to illustrate the marvellous and profound revulsion of feeling which takes place in them; I give it the more readily as it came from a man of mature age and good education, one, in fact, who is in a high educational position, and who, but two weeks previously, had spoken to me in terms of high esteem and affection.

‘Dear Father Antony,—I am deeply pained to find you have fled from the harvest field and become a scatterer—of what type remains to be seen. It is not