But in this deal with Heaven he thought more would be better, and as he had often read in the paper that nothing afforded a better claim on the next world than assistance in supplying priests for the many empty posts, he resolved to have a boy study for holy orders entirely at his own expense. His choice fell upon Matthew Fottner, and this he rued more than once. He should have considered more carefully the quality of the Fottner boy's intellectual endowments. And he would have saved himself much vexation and much anxiety if he had taken more time and picked out some one else. He was in too much of a hurry, and because the teacher said nothing against it and old man Fottner at once agreed with joy, he was satisfied. Doubtless he took the priest at Eynhofen as an example, thinking that what _he_ knew couldn't be hard to learn. Now Matthew was not exactly stupid; but he had no very good head for studying, and his pleasure in it was not immoderate either. When they told him that he was to become a priest, he was content, for the first thing he grasped was that he could then eat more and work less. And so he went to the Latin School at Freising. The first three years were all right. Nothing brilliant, but good enough so he could show his reports at the parsonage when he came home for vacations. And when the priest read that Matthew Fottner was of moderate talent and industry and was making sufficient progress, he would say each time in his fat voice: _magnos progressus fecisti, discipule!_ Matthew did not understand; nor did his father, who stood beside him. But the priest did not care for that. He only said it for the sake of his reputation, so that certain doubters might see that he was a learned gentleman. When folks talked about it in Eynhofen and told each other that Fottner's Matt could already talk Latin like a Roman, no one rejoiced more intensely than the Bridge Farmer. That is comprehensible. For he had speculated in the scholarship of the lad, and watched him with rapt attention, as he would anything else that he had put money into. So he was glad on general grounds, and especially so when Matt came home after the third year with glasses on his nose and an actually priestly look. This tickled him to death, and he asked the teacher whether, in view of this circumstance, and inasmuch as Matt knew Latin, after all--more than was needed to read mass--whether it mightn't be possible to shorten the time. When the teacher told him that such exceptions could not be made, he found it intelligible; but when the schoolmaster tried to explain the reason, saying that a priest didn't merely have to know the reading of the mass by heart, but must know even more, the Bridge Farmer shook his head and laughed a bit. He wasn't such a fool as to swallow that. Why did anybody have to learn more'n what he needed? Hey?