“I am extremely happy,” he replied, “to have found out a way of relieving you without sin: go in peace—you are under no obligation to fast. However, I would not have you depend on my word: step this way to the library.” On going thither with him he took up a book, exclaiming, with great rapture, “Here is the authority for you: and, by my conscience, such an authority! It is ESCOBAR!”[136] “Who is Escobar?” I inquired. “What! not know Escobar?” cried the monk; “the member of our Society who compiled this Moral Theology from twenty-four of our fathers, and on this founds an analogy, in his preface, between his book and ‘that in the Apocalypse which was sealed with seven seals,’ and states that ‘Jesus presents it thus sealed to the four living creatures, Suarez, Vasquez, Molina, and Valencia,[137] in presence of the four-and-twenty Jesuits who represent the four-and-twenty elders?’” He read me, in fact, the whole of that allegory, which he pronounced to be admirably appropriate, and which conveyed to my mind a sublime idea of the excellence of the work. At length, having sought out the passage on fasting, “O here it is!” he said; “treatise 1, example 13, no. 67: ‘If a man cannot sleep without taking supper, is he bound to fast? Answer: _By no means!_’ Will that not satisfy you?” “Not exactly,” replied I; “for I might sustain the fast by taking my refreshment in the morning, and supping at night.” “Listen, then, to what follows; they have provided for all that: ‘And what is to be said, if the person might make a shift with a refreshment in the morning and supping at night?’” “That’s my case exactly.” “‘Answer: Still he is not obliged to fast; because no person is obliged to change the order of his meals.’” “A most excellent reason!” I exclaimed. “But tell me, pray,” continued the monk, “do you take much wine?” “No, my dear father,” I answered; “I cannot endure it.” “I merely put the question,” returned he, “to apprize you that you might, without breaking the fast, take a glass or so in the morning, or whenever you felt inclined for a drop; and that is always something in the way of supporting nature. Here is the decision at the same place, no. 57: ‘May one, without breaking the fast, drink wine at any hour he pleases, and even in a large quantity? Yes, he may: and a dram of hippocrass too.’[138] I had no recollection of the hippocrass,” said the monk; “I must take a note of that in my memorandum-book.” “He must be a nice man, this Escobar,” observed I.