“By Saint Etheldreda,” said Abbat Thurstan, “these ends and objects cannot be sinful! and as sinful means can be employed only for sinful ends, so can righteous ends be served only by righteous means. Fire mingles with fire, and water with water: but fire and water will not mingle or co-exist.” And divers of the cloister-monks, who had never been touched by the venom that was about to ruin the house of Ely and the whole country of England, took up and repeated the Abbat’s words, speaking also of the facts in evidence, as that Girolamo the Salernitan had many times conferred great benefit on the Saxon cause, and the like. And even some of the house who had turned too ready an ear to their own fears, or to the evil and crafty whisperings and suggestions of the prior and his faction, assented to Thurstan’s proposition, and said that verily it appeared the Salernitan was free from the damnable guilt wherewith he was charged, and that if he had used any magic at all, it was only that Magia Alba, or White Magic, which proceeded from the study and ingenuity of man, and which might be used without sin. Now as these things were said in the hall, the prior, fearing that his plot might be counter-plotted, and the meshes he had woven be torn to pieces, and blown to the winds, waxed very desperate; and, after whispering for awhile in the ear of the chamberlain who sat by him, he threw his cowl back from his head, and standing up, spoke passionately. But while the prior spoke he never once looked at Girolamo, who remained standing in the middle of the great hall, firm and erect, and with his arms crossed over his breast. No! desperate as he was, the prior could not meet the fiery glances of that dark thin man; and so he either looked at the round and ruddy face of Thurstan, or in the faces of those monks of his own faction who had made up their minds to support him in all that he might say or do. “It seemeth to me,” said the prior, “that a wicked man may pretend to serve a good cause only for the sake of injuring it, and that a weak man may be brought to believe that good can come out of things that are evil, and that witchcraft and all manner of wickednesses may be employed against an enemy, albeit this is contrary to the doctrine of our Church, and is provocative of the wrath of Heaven. Now, from the first coming of this alien among us, things have gone worse and worse with us. Not but that there have been certain victories and other short glimpses of success, meant only to work upon our ungodly pride, and delude us and make our present misery the keener. When this alien first came, the Lord Abbat liked him not—I need not tell ye, my brethren, that the Lord Abbat said to many of us, that he liked not the looks of the stranger the Lord Hereward brought with him; or that I and the cellarius, and many more of us, thought from the beginning that the man was a Jew—an Israelite—yea, one of that accursed race that crucified our Lord!...”