Chapter X.
Of the toils which a deserter from a monastery must
undergo through covetousness, though he used formerly to murmur at the
very slightest tasks.
And
so he is driven about, and
more and more inflamed with the love of his money, which when it is
acquired, never allows a monk either to remain in a monastery or to
live under the discipline of a rule. And when separating him like some
wild beast from the rest of the herd, it has made him through want of
companions an animal fit for prey, and caused him to be easily eaten
up, as he is deprived of fellow lodgers, it forces him, who once
thought it beneath him to perform the slight duties of the monastery,
to labour without stopping night and day, through hope of gain; it
suffers him to keep no services of prayer, no system of fasting, no
rule of vigils; it does not allow him to fulfil the duties of seemly
intercession, if only he can satisfy the madness of avarice, and supply
his daily wants; inflaming the more the fire of covetousness, while
believing that it will be extinguished by getting.