He exhausted himself in
denunciations of this God-forsaken, wicked generation, sketched in
glaring colours the pains of hell awaiting the accursed race, and then
fell fiercely upon the alarmed Willisauers, upbraiding them, as their
worst sin, with the fostering of heretics in their midst, the said
"heretics" being manifestly ourselves. Fiercer and fiercer grew
his threats, coarser and coarser his insults against us and our
well-wishers, more and more horrible his pictures of the flames of hell,
into grave danger of which the Willisauers, he said, had fallen by their
awful sin. Froebel stood as if benumbed, without moving a muscle, or
changing a feature, exactly in face of the Capuchin, in amongst the
people; and we others also looked straight before us, immovable. The
parents of our pupils, as well as the pupils themselves, and many
others, had already fled midway in the monk's Jeremiad. Every one
expected the affair to end badly for us; and our friends, outside the
church, were taking precautions for our safety, and concerting measures
for seizing the monk who was thus inciting the mob to riot. We stood
quite still all the time in our places listening patiently to the close
of the Capuchin's tirade: "Win, then, for yourselves an everlasting
treasure in heaven.
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