"My conscience doth forbid it," said our lord abbat, "for it may be made a precedent, to the great injury and decay of our discipline. Therefore do I solemnly enter my protest against it. But as I would not see this holy house defiled by strife and blood, nor attempt a forcible expulsion, I will quit mine apartments." And so saying, the lord abbat withdrew, and was followed by all of us. The queen slept in the abbat's bed; her maidens on the rushes, which were carried into that chamber from the abbat's hall; and the knights and men-at-arms slept in the Aula Magna. And, as our good abbat had foreseen, this evil practice was taken as a precedent, in such sort that empresses and queens, and other great princesses, have in these later times been often lodged in Benedictine and in other houses; yet, wherever the abbats and monks entertain a proper sense of their duty, they lodge these visitors in the lord abbat's house, apart from the religious community. But before sleeping, the empress-queen did many things, for it still wanted some hours of the Ave Maria, and many were the stormy thoughts that were working in her brain. Two of her knights we allowed to go out of the house by the postern-gate, but farther ingress we granted to none; and not only did our armed retainers keep watch for us, but our monks, under the vigilant eye of the prior, did also keep watch and ward all through that evening and night, for we feared some extreme mischief; and it would not have failed to happen if Matilda had been enabled to get her partisans in greater force within the house. In truth, not many of our community knew that night what sleep was. The materials for an abundant supper were furnished to the empress-queen and her people; and some of these last were singing ungodly songs in the abbat's great hall when our church-bell told the midnight hour; yea, there was a noise of singing, and a running to and fro, and a squealing of womanly voices long after that, to the great sorrow and shame of the fathers of our house. I, Felix, albeit only a novice, was of those who slept not. And I saw a great sight. Watching in the eastern turret, I did see a fiery meteor, hirsute like a comet, but not so big, shoot up from the marshes on the other side of the Kennet, not far from the back of our abbey; and this meteor, as it passed over our house, did divide itself into three several parts, and these did rush away to the westward as quick as lightning, and there drop and disappear. Before the night came again I was made to understand what these things meant. IV.