shouldn't cross it in safety now, cried one. But forget not the basket
of eggs, said a second. Nor the honey, mentioned a third, and a fourth
called after him the quality of lentils he enjoyed. The mind of the
fifth regarding food was not expressed, for a curator came by and
reproved them, saying they were mere belly-worshippers.

There will be less water in the river than there was overnight, the
curator said, and Joseph hoped he was right, for it would be a harsh and
disagreeable death to drown in a lake so salt that fish could not live
in it. True, one would escape being eaten by fishes; but if the mule be
carried away, he said to himself, drown I shall, long before I reach the
lake, unless indeed I strike out and swim--which, it seemed to him,
might be the best way to save his life--and if there be no current in
the lake I can gain the shore easily. But the first sight of the river
proved the vanity of his foreboding, for during the night it had emptied
a great part of its flood into the lake. The struggle in getting his
mule across was slight; still slighter when he returned with a sack of
lentils, a basket of eggs, some pounds of honey and many misgivings as
to whether he should announce this last commodity to the curator or
introduce it surreptitiously. To begin his probationship with a
surreptitious act would disgrace him in the eyes of the prior, whose
good opinion he valued above all. So did his thoughts run on till he
came within sight of a curator, who told him that sometimes, on the
first day of probationship, honey and figs were allowed.

The cooking of the food and the eating of it in the only cabin in which
there were conveniences for eating helped the time away, and Joseph
began to ask himself how long his cloistral life was going to endure,
for he seemed to have lost all desire to leave it, and had begun to turn
the different crafts over in his mind and to debate which he should