“’Tis well imagined,” said the chamberlain in another whisper; “but we must undo the effect of that devil Girolamo’s speech, and prepare the minds of the monks for the work we would have them do.” While the prior and the chamberlain were thus whispering together, divers of the old monks, who loved not their faction and who had grown weary of this long sitting, quitted the hall without leaving the mantle of their wisdom and experience behind them; and after their departure the prior and his faction so perplexed the dull wits of the honester part of the community, that they again began to believe that the Salernitan was a necromancer and the abbat his fautor, that there was no hope of getting corn or wine unless they submitted to Duke William, and that if they did not submit they would all be murthered by the Normans. They also spoke, and at great length, of the privations they had undergone ever since the beginning of the war. “Yea! how long and how manifold have been our sufferings,” said the sub-sacrist. “When this accursed Camp first began to be formed, was not our house entirely filled with guests? Did they not seize upon our hall, nay, even upon our kitchen? And were not we of the convent obliged to take our meals in the dormitory, as well on flesh days as on fish-days? Were not all open spaces in the monastery crowded, so that the abbey looked more like a fair than a house of religion? Was not the grass-plot of the cloisters so trampled down by the feet of profane fighting-men that no vestige of green was to be seen upon it? And though most of these guests be now gone into the Camp, because there is little left here for them to devour, do not the cellars, the store-houses, the kitchen, and every part of the house speak of their having been here, and of the poverty and disorder in which they have left us?” “Aye,” said the refectorarius, “wonderful hath been the waste! The revenue of the abbat, the common property of the house, and the incomings allotted to the several officials to enable them to bear the charges and do the duties of their offices, have all been anticipated and consumed! And let our improvident Abbat tell me how I am to find that which I am bound to provide for the whole convent to wit, pots, noggins, cups, table-cloths, mats, basons, double-cloths, candlesticks, towels, plates, saltcellars, silver plates wherewith to mend the cups that be broken, and the like; besides furnishing three times in the year, to wit, at All Saints, Christmas, and Easter, five burthens of straw to put under the feet of the monks in the refectory, and five burthens of rushes and hay wherewith to strew the hall?”