They took delight in harassing me on this matter, and
they stole and carried off whatsoever they could lay their hands
on, to the end that my failure to maintain order might make me
either give up trying to enforce discipline or else abandon my post
altogether. Since the entire region was equally savage, lawless and
disorganized, there was not a single man to whom I could turn for
aid, for the habits of all alike were foreign to me. Outside the
monastery the lord and his henchmen ceaselessly hounded me, and
within its walls the brethren were forever plotting against me, so
that it seemed as if the Apostle had had me and none other in mind
when he said: "Without were fightings, within were fears" (II Cor. vii, 5).
I considered and lamented the uselessness and the wretchedness of
my existence, how fruitless my life now was, both to myself and to
others; how of old I had been of some service to the clerics whom I
had now abandoned for the sake of these monks, so that I was no
longer able to be of use to either; how incapable I had proved
myself in everything I had undertaken or attempted, so that above
all others I deserved the reproach, "This man began to build, and
was not able to finish" (Luke xiv, 30).
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