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Updated: May 16, 2025
On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and lower, with a line of cliffs at the top.
"Then, say what you will play for!" the great man roared, his face swelling with rage. "Thousand devils and all tonsured! I have a mind to win his life. What will you have against it?" "Against it?" "Ay!" "Yours!" said M. Berthaud, very softly. Bazan drew in his breath sharply: otherwise the silence was so intense that the fall of the wood-ashes from the dying fire could be heard.
From the chancel we went through the keyholes, up to the top of a certain cell which was full of candles, though it was broad daylight, and where we could see a tonsured priest walking about as if expecting someone to come to him; and ere long there comes a buxom matron, with a fair maid in her wake, bending their knees before him to confess their sins.
He did not find much difficulty in discovering the quadrangle on the south side of the minster where the minor canons lived near the deanery; and the porter, a stout lay brother, pointed out to him the doorway belonging to Master Alworthy. He knocked, and a young man with a tonsured head but a bloated face opened it.
Dressed in a strange garb, tonsured in a strange manner, speaking a strange tongue, but able to converse fluently enough in Latin with those who knew that language, it was found that some of their ecclesiastical customs were as strange as their appearance and their tongue; so strange that the Franks and Burgundians had to call a council to consider how they should be treated.
The tonsured white head was covered by a small skull-cap of purple velvet. A large amethyst ring flashed on the second finger of the left hand. Monseigneur sat there the picture of serene force. While all around him was uproar, within his apartment the atmosphere of peace reigned with a visible, tangible presence.
Yet this tonsured Girolamo with the high nose and large under lip was an immensely clever Frate, mixing with his absurd superstitions or fabrications very remarkable notions about government: no babbler, but a man who could keep his secrets. Tito had no more spite against him than against Saint Dominic.
This was a nimble way by which confessors fined penitents to their own profit. Annual and other customary masses to be said without temporal gain. Priestly administration only to be undertaken by those who are proved to be duly ordained by the archbishop or one of his suffragans: forged orders being plentiful. Incumbents to be tonsured, and clergy to wear "the crown" instead of love-locks.
Two teeth lost in a night orgy and brawl, he did not exactly remember now, caused him to spit out indistinct words which one could not always understand. He was bald only on the top of his head, like a tonsured monk, with a crop of short, curly hair, golden and shiny, around this circle of bare flesh. Then both came back near the window and declared that theirs was not a cheerful lot.
A loud wail of horror rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of thanksgiving and of joy. On the road which led to the old dark manor-house upon the side of the hill a youth had been riding.
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