Then he would seek her hurriedly and half ashamed, and say hastily, "Keep the night after to-morrow for me, and promise no one else!" When he entered the house at the appointed time, he would leave the fair one standing, and betake him to the farthest corner of the room, fall on his knees, and pray fervently and at the pitch of his voice all night long for the occupant of the house. In the early morning he would leave her, and charge her strictly not to tell any one what had passed between them. So he went on for a good while, and got himself into very ill odour indeed. For while in secret, behind the closed doors of the wantons, he alarmed and touched many a lost woman by his fiery words of thunder and the fervent sweetness of his murmured prayers, so that she came to herself and began to lead a holy life; in the public eye, on the contrary, he appeared to have laid himself out of set purpose to merit the reputation of a vicious and sinful monk, who wallowed gleefully in all the debaucheries of the world, and flaunted his religious habit as a banner of shame. If he found himself of an evening at dusk in respectable company, he would exclaim abruptly, "Oh! what am I about? I had almost forgotten that the brunette Doris is waiting for me, the little dear! The deuce! I must be off, or she will be vexed!" If any one reproached him, he would cry out as if incensed, "Do you think that I am a stone? Do you imagine that God did not create a little woman for a monk?" If any one said, "Father, you would be better to lay aside your frock and marry, so as not to offend others," he would answer, "Let them be offended if they choose, and run their heads against a wall! Who is my judge?" All this he used to say with great vehemence and all the address of an actor, like one who defends a bad cause with a multitude of bold words. And he would go off and quarrel with the other suitors before the girls' doors. He would even come to blows with them, and administered many a rude buffet when they said, "Away with the monk! Does the cleric mean to dispute the ground with us? Get out, bald-pate!" But he was so obstinate and persistent that in most cases he got the better of them, and slipped into the house before they knew where they were. When he returned to his cell in the grey of the morning, he would cast himself down before the Mother of God, to whose sole honour and praise he undertook those adventures and drew down on himself the world's blame; and, did he succeed in bringing back some lost lamb and placing her in some holy convent, he felt more blissful in the presence of Heaven's Queen than if he had converted a thousand heathen. For this was his very remarkable taste, to endure the martyrdom of appearing in the eye of the world as an unclean profligate, while all the time Our Undefiled Lady in Heaven was well aware that he had never touched a woman, and that he wore an invisible crown of white roses on his much-maligned head.