Knecht even admired Father Jacobus’s spells of angry unfairness. At the time, however, he had no notion of who Father Jacobus really was. He regarded him solely as a profound and brilliant scholar and was unaware that here was someone who was consciously participating in world history, and helping to shape it as the leading statesman of his Order. As an expert in contemporary politics as well as political history, Father Jacobus was constantly being approached from many sides for information, advice, and mediation. For some two years, up to the time of his first vacation, Knecht continued to think of Father Jacobus solely as a scholar, knowing no more of the man’s life, activity, reputation, and influence than the monk cared to reveal. The learned Father knew how to keep his counsel, even in friendship; and his brothers in the monastery were also far abler at concealment than Joseph would have imagined.
After some two years Knecht had adapted to the life in the monastery as perfectly as any guest and outsider could. From time to time he had helped the organist modestly continue the thin thread of an ancient and great tradition in the monastery’s small chorus of motet singers. He had made several finds in the monastic musical archives and had sent to Waldzell, and especially to Monteport, several copies of old works. He had trained a small beginners’ class of Glass Bead Game players, among whom the most zealous pupil was young Anton. He had taught Abbot Gervasius no Chinese, but had at least imparted the technique of manipulating the yarrow sticks and an improved method of meditating on the aphorisms in the Book of Oracles. The Abbot had grown accustomed to him, and had long since stopped trying to coax his guest into taking an occasional glass of wine. The semiannual reports sent by the Abbot to the Glass Bead Game Master, in reply to official inquiries as to the usefulness of Joseph Knecht, were full of praise. In Castalia, the lesson plans and marks in Knecht’s Game course were scrutinized even more closely than these reports; the middling level of instruction was recognized, but the Castalian authorities were satisfied with the way the teacher had adapted to this level and, in general, to the customs and the spirit of the monastery. They were even more pleased, and truly surprised — although they kept this to themselves — by his frequent and friendly association with the famous Father Jacobus.
This association had borne all sorts of fruits, and perhaps we may be permitted to say a word about these even at the cost of anticipating our story somewhat; or at any rate about the fruit which Knecht most prized. It ripened slowly, slowly, grew as tentatively and warily as the seeds of high mountain trees that have been planted down in the lush lowlands: these seeds, consigned to rich soil and a kindly climate, carry in themselves as their legacy the restraint and mistrust with which their forebears grew; the slow tempo of growth belongs among their hereditary traits. Thus the prudent old man, accustomed to keep close watch over all possible influences upon him, permitted the element of Castalian spirit brought to him by his young friend and antipodal colleague to strike root only reluctantly and inch by inch. Gradually, however, it sprouted; and of all the good things that Knecht experienced in his years at the monastery, this was the best and most precious of all to him: this scanty, hesitant growth of trust and openness from seemingly hopeless beginnings on the part of the experienced older man, this slowly germinating and even more slowly admitted sympathy for his younger admirer as a person and, beyond that, for the specifically Castalian elements in his personality. Step by step the younger man, seemingly little more than pupil, listener, and learner, led Father Jacobus — who initially had used the words “Castalian” and Glass Bead Game player only with ironic emphasis, and often as outright invective — toward a tolerant and ultimately respectful acceptance of this other mentality, this other Order, this other attempt to create an aristocracy of the spirit. Father Jacobus ceased to carp at the youth of the Order, though with its little more than two centuries the Benedictines were the elder by some fifteen hundred years. He ceased to regard the Glass Bead Game as mere aesthetic dandyism; and he ceased to rule out the prospect of friendship and alliance between two Orders so ill matched in age.
