Monsignor Quixote

It is strange how quickly a bottle can be emptied when one debates without rancour. The Mayor poured the last few drops upon the ground. ‘For the gods,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I say the gods not God. The gods drink deep, but your solitary God is, I’m sure, a teetotaller.’

He prayed in his silence: O God, make me human, let me feel temptation. Save me from my indifference.

It’s odd, he thought, as he steered Rocinante with undue caution round a curve, how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.

‘Father Heribert Jone found drunkenness a more serious sin than gluttony. I don’t understand that. A little drunkenness has brought us together, Sancho. It helps friendship. Gluttony surely is a solitary vice. A form of onanism.

You choose very unsuitable friends and travelling companions, monsignor.’ ‘I don’t need to remind Your Excellency that Our Lord …’ ‘Oh yes, yes. I know what you are going to say. The text about publicans and sinners has always been very carelessly used to justify a lot of imprudence.

So often the guests at the monastery were young people of great piety who imagined that they had a vocation for a Trappist life, and they invariably irritated him by their ignorance and by their exaggerated respect for what they believed had been his great sacrifice. They wanted in a romantic way to sacrifice their own lives. But he had come here o

They finished a bottle quickly and Sancho opened another. ‘Is that wise?’ Father Quixote asked. ‘Wisdom is not absolute,’ Sancho said. ‘Wisdom is relative to a given situation. Wisdom too varies with the individual case. For me it is wise to drink another half bottle in a situation like ours when we have no food. For you of course it may well be fo

‘So we are hiding in a brothel?’ ‘Yes. You could put it that way.’ A most unexpected sound came from the bed. It was the sound of strangled laughter.

‘But to become a Trappist?’ ‘I think, you know, professor, that when one has to jump, it’s so much safer to jump into deep water.’ ‘And you don’t regret …?’ ‘Professor, there are always plenty of things to regret. Regrets are part of life. One can’t escape regrets even in a twelfth-century monastery. Can you escape from them in the University of No