The season for sowing had been spent in building the convent, and when the winter came they were reduced to little better than starvation. Coarse bread and beech-leaves steeped in salt were their only food. This scanty sustenance, together with the strict adherence to the Benedictine rule, in which Bernard still persisted, so shattered his health, that the bishop of the diocese, who was his personal friend, at last interfered, and released him from the active duties of abbot. But as soon as a brief respite had restored his strength, Bernard renewed his self-mortifying practices. A fresh attack of illness followed, and he was obliged permanently to relax his habits. In after-years he lamented the error into which his early enthusiasm and mistaken zeal had led him, the effects of which greatly marred his future influence for good. Though debarred from laboring in his own sphere, Bernard's energetic mind would not let him rest, and he began from this time to exercise the power which his reputation for sanctity had brought him, in political life. He well knew the nature of the position which he was thus enabled to take, and did not shrink from its perils. "Bernard! wherefore art thou here on earth?" is said to have been his constant self-appeal. Poor and unarmed, a priest or monk in those days had nothing wherewith to oppose the tyranny of the powerful nobility, save the weapons of religion and intellect. How righteously they could be used we shall see in the case of Bernard. In repeated instances he interposed the weight of his authority between the anger of a king or noble and the weakness of a subject or tenant, and scarcely ever failed in his object. One of the most remarkable examples of this kind was his conduct toward the Count of Aquitaine. This nobleman, a man of immense strength of will no less than body, and violent and despotic beyond his fellows, having espoused the cause of one rival Pope against another, dismissed from their sees several excellent bishops in his territory who were adverse to his views, and supplied their places without regard to fitness of character. Bernard, having twice remonstrated in vain, after the last interview held a solemn mass in the church near the count's castle, at which that nobleman, as excommunicated, could not be present, but stood outside. The consecration of the wafer was duly performed, and the blessing bestowed upon the people, when Bernard suddenly made his way through the crowd, bearing in his hand the Host on its paten (or plate), and confronted the astonished count as he stood at the church door amid his soldiery. With pale, stern face, and flashing eyes, the daring monk thus addressed the haughty chief: "Twice have the Lord's servants entreated you, and you have despised them. Lo! now the blessed Son of the Virgin--the Head and Lord of that Church which you persecute--appears to you! Behold your Judge, to whom your soul must be rendered! Will you