But that couldn't be the whole truth . . . and so he suddenly, without being able to stop, began citing long passages from the Song of Songs.

   What was God's intention with this? And what had Ovid been talking about in those texts that Arn had read by mistake as a boy? Wasn't Ovid's text suspiciously similar to God's Word in certain respects?

   After his uncontrollable outburst Arn bowed his head in shame. He had never before uttered such an insubordinate polemic to Father Henri. He wouldn't have found it unfair to receive another two weeks on bread and water as punishment, since he had shown himself to be unrepentant.

   But Father Henri's reaction was not what he expected. He almost seemed glad about what he'd heard, although naturally he couldn't share Arn's view.

   "Your will is strong, your mind is still free and at times intractable, like something in those horses you break. I have certainly watched you do it, let me tell you," said Father Henri thoughtfully. "This is good, because more than anything I was afraid that I'd broken your will so that you would not understand God the day He calls you. So much for that. Now to why you are wrong."

   Father Henri explained the whole thing calmly and quietly. It was true that God had given human beings a libido which was not shameful, and it was this that the Song of Songs, for example, talked about. The divine order behind this, of course, was that humankind had the task of replenishing the earth, and that goal was better served by the fact that the special activity required to fulfill this duty was pleasant. And in a bond sanctified by God, within the sanctity of marriage, with the purpose of begetting children, this desire was pleasing to God and not at all a sin.

   From this explanation Arn immediately drew the completely absurd conclusion that a man and a woman should wait until they found someone they loved and then have their libido blessed by marriage. Father Henri was much amused by this bizarre idea.

   But Arn did not yield, encouraged by Father Henri's unexpectedly tempered disposition. Because, Arn went on, if love in itself, that is, the form of love talked about in the Song of Songs, was not something evil but quite the opposite, under certain given premises, something pleasing to God—why was all such activity forbidden for those who toiled in God's garden? In short, how could love be a gross sin punishable by bread and water and a hair shirt if one was enticed by it, and yet at the same time be a blessing for humanity?

   "Well," said Father Henri, clearly amused by the question. "To begin with, one must of course distinguish between the higher world and the lower. Plato, you know. We belong to the higher world, that is the basic theoretical starting point, but I presume you want more meat on the bones than that, because you do know your Plato. Imagine then all the greening fields around Vitae Schola, think of all of Brother Lucien's herbs and fruits and the knowledge he spreads to our neighbors, think of Brother Guilbert's forging art and horse training, or Brother Guy's fishery. Observe now that I'm not speaking in metaphors but keeping to the practical plane. When you think about all this, what does it mean?"

   "We do good for our neighbors. Just as the Lord is always our shepherd, we can at least be the shepherds of humanity. We give people a better life through our knowledge and our work, is that what you mean, father?"

   "Yes, my son, that's exactly what I mean. We are like God's knowledge-bearers going out into the unknown—who said that, by the way?"

   "Holy Saint Bernard, of course."

   "Yes, that's right. We test the unknown, we tame nature, we bend the steel in new ways, we find a remedy for evil, and we make the bread last longer. That is what we do in a purely practical sense. Added to that is the knowledge we disseminate, in the same way as we sow wheat, about the Word of God and how it is to be understood. Are you with me so far?"

   "Yes, of course, but how can that . . ." Arn began, but he was much too filled with the argumentative spirit and had to restrain himself and start over. "Forgive me, father, but let me ask the question anew and from a purely concrete perspective. Forgive me if I'm impertinent, I understand all that you say about our good work. But why can't the brothers in the order ever enjoy the pleasures of love? If love is good, why do we have to refrain from it?"

   "That can be explained on two levels," said Father Henri, seemingly still equally untroubled and amused by his pupil's brooding. "Our high calling, our work as God's most assiduous servants on earth, has a price. And that price is that we must devote both our soul and our body to the service of God. Otherwise we could never accomplish anything lasting. Imagine if the brothers here had women and children in every nook and cranny! At least half our time would be spent on things other than what we now are able to achieve. And we would start looking around anxiously for property, since our children would need an inheritance from us—and that's only one thing! Our vow of poverty thus has much the same function as our vow of chastity. We own nothing, and when we die the Church owns everything we have used and created."

   Arn fell silent. He saw the logic in what Father Henri had said; he was also grateful that Father Henri had chosen to explain using base earthly examples instead of casting himself into the teachings of Plato and Saint Bernard's theories about different human souls at different stages. But he was still not satisfied; it felt as though something was missing in the logic. If nothing else, one might ask why self-defilement should be so terrible. Was it like a sort of gluttony of the soul, perhaps? Or merely something that drew one's thoughts away from God? Actually it was impossible, he admitted with a blush, to think about God at the same time he was doing that.

   When Father Henri saw that Arn seemed to have understood and at least largely accepted the simple explanations he had received, Father Henri, clearly in high spirits, decided that the rest of Arn's week of penance should take place in the cookhouses with the Provençal brothers. Still on a diet of bread and water, however, which could be a very difficult test in a cookhouse, but strengthening for the will of the soul.

The cookhouses were the most intense workplaces in all of Vitae Schola. The brothers who worked in the fields went home to vespers, the brothers who worked in the smithies and carpentry shops, those who did stonecutting or spinning, those who worked in the farrieries, the brickworks, or the barns, the monks in charge of sheep tending or beekeeping or the herb gardens or the vegetable field—all had their nightly pauses from work, and they all had time for their reading without getting behind in their daily tasks.