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So it came to pass that the younger Brethren waxed fat and kicked, and the elder Brethren murmured. One day the Novice-master, Brother Adam, a most worthy man, came in sore trouble to the Prior and would resign his office. "Surely never before did such an ill-conditioned brood find shelter in a monastery!" he cried.
Many years afterwards, and when near his death, Father Hecker once said to the writer: "While I was kneeling among the novices, outside Père Othmann's room, waiting to go to confession, I often begged of God that it might be His will that I should die before my turn came, so dreadful an ordeal had confession become on account of the severity of the novice-master."
The assistant novice-master, who took Father Othmann's place during his absence, was a Walloon. His name we have been unable to discover, but he was a holy priest, held up to the novices as their model and esteemed by them as the saint of the novitiate. He was a very pleasant man withal, and no doubt added in every way to the fruits of the long year of spiritual trial.
This question, however, was but the expression of a shadowy doubt, vanishing as suddenly as it had come. The novice-master was Father Othmann, and he was by universal testimony entirely competent for his place. He was himself the novitiate.
Fifthly, let them lay bare the whole ground of their heart to their superior or to their spiritual father. Father Hecker had himself suffered, and that in the earliest days of his religious life, from want of explicit instruction about this doctrine. Father Othmann, whom our readers remember as the novice-master at St. Trond, was too spiritual a man to have been ignorant of its principles.
The Prior listened with many an inward mea culpa. "'Tis a sad hearing, Brother Adam, but young blood is hard of mastering; maybe this ill mood will pass. The lad Robert is surely ever gentle and decorous? He hath a most beauteous voice." The Novice-master threw up his hands. "Nay, Father, nay, he hath indeed the voice of an angel, but methinks his body is surely the habitation of Satan.
He went to the novice-master after the morning-chapter, and told him that he had made up his mind to offer himself for profession if it was thought advisable by the authorities. Towards the end of August he presented himself once more before the chapter to make his solemn demand; his petition was granted, and a day appointed for his profession.
But he found lecturing in Latin difficult; and so to make up his deficiencies he set himself to read all the Latin classics and Fathers that he could find. One day two young kinsmen of the Abbot were at dinner. They had been at Deventer and then at Paris, and were full of their studies. Butzbach as novice-master represented the humanities, and was called upon for a poem.
Mark broke off to inquire, for Brother Anselm was staring in front of him through his big horn spectacles like an owl. "No, no," said the senior. "But I'm not the novice-master. Who is, by the way?" "Brother Jerome." The other did not comment on this information, but Mark was sure that he was trying not to look contemptuous.
You will do that for three days, and then, please God, you will be clothed as a novice." And once more he looked at him with deep smiling eyes. Chris asked him a few more questions, and Dom Anthony told him what he wished to know, though protesting with monastic etiquette that it was not his province. "Dom James Berkely is the novice-master," he said, "you will find him very holy and careful.
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