He was suffered to be proud, vain, ambitious, and disdainful: he was jealous of his equals, and despised all merit but his own: he was implacable when offended, and cruel in his revenge. Still in spite of the pains taken to pervert them, his natural good qualities would occasionally break through the gloom cast over them so carefully. At such times the contest for superiority between his real and acquired character was striking and unaccountable to those unacquainted with his original disposition. He pronounced the most severe sentences upon offenders, which, the moment after, compassion induced him to mitigate: he undertook the most daring enterprises, which the fear of their consequences soon obliged him to abandon: his inborn genius darted a brilliant light upon subjects the most obscure; and almost instantaneously his superstition re-plunged them in darkness more profound than that from which they had just been rescued. His brother monks, regarding him as a superior being, remarked not this contradiction in their idol’s conduct. They were persuaded that what he did must be right, and supposed him to have good reasons for changing his resolutions.