Roger of Salerno hunched head and shoulders like an angry cat. “Always _that_!” he said, and John snatched down the twist of the thin lips. “Never at rest, John,” the Abbot smiled at the artist. “You should break off every two hours for prayers, as we do. St. Benedict was no fool. Two hours is all that a man can carry the edge of his eye or hand.” “For copyists--yes. Brother Martin is not sure after one hour. But when a man’s work takes him, he must go on till it lets him go.” “Yes, that is the Demon of Socrates,” the Friar from Oxford rumbled above his cup. “The doctrine leans toward presumption,” said the Abbot. “Remember, ‘Shall mortal man be more just than his Maker?’” “There is no danger of justice”; the Friar spoke bitterly. “But at least Man might be suffered to go forward in his Art or his thought. Yet if Mother Church sees or hears him move anyward, what says she? ‘No!’ Always ‘No.’” “But if the little animals of Varro be invisible”--this was Roger of Salerno to Thomas--“how are we any nearer to a cure?” “By experiment”--the Friar wheeled round on them suddenly. “By reason and experiment. The one is useless without the other. But Mother Church----” “Ay!” Roger de Salerno dashed at the fresh bait like a pike. “Listen, Sirs. Her bishops--our Princes--strew our roads in Italy with carcasses that they make for their pleasure or wrath. Beautiful corpses! Yet if I--if we doctors--so much as raise the skin of one of them to look at God’s fabric beneath, what says Mother Church? ‘Sacrilege! Stick to your pigs and dogs, or you burn!’” “And not Mother Church only!” the Friar chimed in. “_Every_ way we are barred--barred by the words of some man, dead a thousand years, which are held final. Who is any son of Adam that his one say-so should close a door towards truth? I would not except even Peter Peregrinus, my own great teacher.” “Nor I Paul of Aegina,” Roger of Salerno cried. “Listen Sirs! Here is a case to the very point. Apuleius affirmeth, if a man eat fasting of the juice of the cut-leaved buttercup--_sceleratus_ we call it, which means ‘rascally’”--this with a condescending nod towards John--“his soul will leave his body laughing. Now this is the lie more dangerous than truth, since truth of a sort is in it.” “He’s away!” whispered the Abbot despairingly. “For the juice of that herb, I know by experiment, burns, blisters, and wries the mouth. I know also the _rictus_, or pseudo-laughter on the face of such as have perished by the strong poisons of herbs allied to this ranunculus. Certainly that spasm resembles laughter. It seems then, in my judgment, that Apuleius, having seen the body of one thus poisoned, went off at score and wrote that the man died laughing.” “Neither staying to observe, nor to confirm observation by experiment,” added the Friar, frowning. Stephen the Abbot cocked an eyebrow toward John. “How think _you_?” said he.