Melmoth The Wanderer, Volume 4 by Charles Maturin

This to me In dreadful secrecy they did impart, And I with them the third night kept the watch. SHAKESPEARE.

"As they spoke, a soft knock was heard, such as kindness gives at the door of misfortune, and Everhard started up to answer it. "Stay," said Walberg, absently, "Where are the servants? " Then recollecting himself, he smiled agonizingly, and waved his hand to his son to go. It was the good priest. He entered, and sat down in silence, -- no one spoke to him. It might be truly said, as it is sublimely said in the original, "There was neither speech nor language, but voices were heard among them -- _and felt too_. " The worthy priest piqued himself on his orthodoxy of all matters of belief and form enjoined by the Catholic church; and, moreover, had acquired a kind of monastic apathy, of sanctified stoicism, which priests sometimes imagine is the conquest of grace over the rebellion of nature, when it is merely the result of a profession that denies nature its objects and its ties.