Notwithstanding all this, the fathers were determined to judge for themselves, and try by experiment if any aristocratic _hauteur_ might yet lurk in the corners of his {355} disposition. Our rule, moreover, requires that postulants be tried by humiliations before being admitted to the habit; and many and various are the tests applied, depending, as they do, on the judgment of the master of novices. One clause of the rule was especially applicable to Father Spencer: "_Qui nobili ortus est genere, accuratiore et diuturniore experimento probetur_; "and the strict Father Constantine, who was then the master, resolved that not a word of it should be unfulfilled. A day or two after his arrival, he was ordered to wash down an old, rusty flight of stairs. He tucked up his sleeves and fell to, using his brush, tub, and soapsuds with as much zest and good will as if he had been just hired as a maid-of-all-work. Of course, he was no great adept at this kind of employment, and probably his want of skill drew down some sharp rebukes from his overseer. Some tender-hearted religious never could forget the sight of this venerable ecclesiastic trying to scour the crevices and crannies to the satisfaction of his new master. He got through it well, and took the corrections so beautifully, that in a few days he was voted to the habit. On the afternoon of the 5th January, 1847, vespers are just concluded, and the bell is rung for another function. People are hurrying up to the little chapel, and whispering to each other about the scene they are going to witness. The altar is prepared as for a feast. The thurifers and acolytes head the procession from the sacristy; next follow the religious; then Father Dominic arrayed in surplice and cope. After him follows Father Spencer, in the costume of a secular priest. He kneels on the altar step; he has laid aside long before all that the world could give him; he has thrown its greatness and its folly away as vanities to be despised, and now asks for the penitential garb of the sons of the Passion, with all its concomitant hardships. He had not yet experienced the happiness it brings: he had only begun to earn it by broken rest, fasts, and humiliations. Father Dominic blesses the habit, mantle, and cincture; he addresses a few touching words to the postulant, and prepares to vest him. In the presence of all he takes off the cassock, the habit is put on and bound with a leathern {356} girdle, a cross is placed upon his shoulder, a crown of thorns on his head, benedictions are invoked upon him according to the ritual, the religious intone the _Ecce quam bonum_, Our Lord gives His blessing from the Monstrance, and the Honourable and Reverend-George Spencer is greeted as a brother and companion by Father Dominic, under the new name of Father Ignatius of St. Paul. Thus ended the function of that day, and the benisons of the rite were not pronounced in vain.