With that he began to weep. We waited, breathless. Still he wept, and could speak no word, his sobs audible in the stillness, and the tears making their way through his fingers as he hid his face in his hands. This continued till the people grew restless. Longer yet, with more manifest discontent. At last a voice cried out from among the people (I think it was that roughspoken Carvel, the butcher), ‘Now then, Sir, how long are we to stop here? It is getting late, if you don’t mean to preach, let us go home.’ I saw that Tauler was struggling to collect himself by prayer, but his emotion became only the more uncontrollable, and at last he said, with a broken voice,— ‘Dear brethren, I am sorry from my heart to have kept you so long, but at this time I cannot possibly speak to you. Pray God for me that he would help me, and I may do better at another time.’ So we went away, and the report thereof was presently all over Strasburg. The snowball had plenty of hands to roll it, and lost nothing by the way. The people, numbers of them, seemed to me with a wicked glee to delight in showing how the learned Doctor had made a fool of himself. Those who had counted him mad before reckoned themselves now little short of prophets. Many such whom I met in the streets looked and spoke with such a hateful triumph of the matter as well nigh put me beside myself. Not so long ago, no one could satisfy them but Tauler; not the name of the most popular of saints oftener on their lips; the very ground he trod on was blessed; a kindly word from his lips food for days—and now the hands stretched out almost in adoration, throw mire on the fallen idol, and not a ‘prentice lad behind his stall but hugs himself in his superior sanity. Had he been a hunter after popularity, what a judgment! Verily that man has the folly of a thousand fools who lives for the applause of the multitude. But I know how Tauler’s heart bled for them. Friar Bernard came over this evening. He says the superiors are wroth beyond measure with Tauler for the scandal he has brought upon the order, and will forbid him to preach more. Entertained my jovial gauger of monks’ bellies with the best cheer I had—he has a good heart after all, and is unfeignedly sorry for Tauler’s disgrace. Says he thinks the Doctor has fasted and done penance beyond his strength, that the sudden coming out from his cell to preach to such numbers was too much for his weakness,—that he will get over it and be himself again, and much more,—to the hope whereof he pledged me in another glass, and left me not a little comforted.