Leonardus now became visibly colder in his manner, avoiding to speak with me, unless before witnesses. At last, one day, when we were left alone in the great _allée_ of the convent garden, he broke out--"Brother Medardus, I can no longer conceal from you, that for some time past your whole behaviour has been such as to excite in me the greatest displeasure. There has arisen in your mind some adverse and hostile principle, by which you have become wholly alienated from a life of pious simplicity. In your discourses, there prevails a dangerous obscurity; and from this darkness many things appear ready, if you dared utter them, to start forward, which if plainly spoken, would effectually separate you and me for ever. To be candid--at this moment you bear about with you, and betray that unalterable curse of our sinful origin, by which even every powerful struggle of our spiritual energies is rendered a means of opening to us the realms of destruction, whereinto we thoughtless mortals are, alas! too apt to go astray! "The approbation, nay, the idolatrous admiration, which has been paid to you by the capricious multitude, who are always in search of novelty, has dazzled you, and you behold yourself in an artificial character, which is not your own, but a deceitful phantom, which will entice you rapidly into the gulf of perdition. Return, then, into yourself, Medardus--renounce the delusion which thus besets and overpowers you! I believe that I thoroughly understand this delusion,--at least, I am well aware of its effects. Already have you lost utterly that calmness and complacence of spirit, without which there is, on this earth, no hope of real improvement. Take warning, then, in time! Resist the fiend who besets you! Be once more that good-humoured and open-hearted youth whom with my whole soul I loved!" Tears involuntarily flowed from the eyes of the good Prior while he spoke thus. He had taken my hand, but now letting it fall, he departed quickly without waiting for any answer. His words had indeed penetrated my heart; but, alas! the impressions that they had left were only those of anger, distrust, and resentment. He had spoken of the approbation, nay, the admiration and respect, which I had obtained by my wonderful talents; and it became but too obvious that only pitiful envy had been the real source of that displeasure, which he so candidly expressed towards me. Silent, and wrapt up within myself, I remained at the next meeting of the brethren, a prey to devouring indignation. Still buoyed up and excited by the wild inspirations which had risen up within me, I continued through whole days and long sleepless nights my laborious contrivances how I might best commit to paper (without a too candid avowal of my self-idolatry) the glorious ideas that crowded on my mind.