Prior Robert arched his silver eyebrows and looked dubiously down his thin,patrician nose. “The custom of offering children as oblates has been approvedfor centuries. The Rule sanctions it. Any change which departs from the Rulemust be undertaken only after grave reflection. Have we the right to deny whata father wishes for his child?”
“Have we—has the father—the right to determine the course of a life, beforethe unwitting innocent has a voice to speak for himself? The practice, I know,is long established, and never before questioned, but it is being questionednow.”
“In abandoning it,” persisted Robert, “we may be depriving some tender soulof its best way to blessedness. Even in the years of childhood a wrong turningmay be taken, and the way to divine grace lost.”
“I grant the possibility,” agreed the abbot, “but also I fear the reversemay be true, and many such children, better suited to another life and anotherway of serving God, may be shut into what must be for them a prison. On thismatter I know only my own mind. Here we have Brother Edmund, a child of thecloister from his fourth year, and Brother Cadfael, conversus after an activeand adventurous life and at a mature age. And both, as I hope and believe,secure in commitment. Tell us, Edmund, how do you look upon this matter? Haveyou regretted ever that you were denied experience of the world outside thesewalls?”