Chapter XXVI: Seventh Preservative

_Caution in doubtful cases_

ACT with the greatest reserve in doubtful cases where grave suspicions, difficult to be cleared up, rest on a religious superior or inferior, as the case may be.

The ears of the Superior are sacred, and it is unworthy profanation to pour into them false or exaggerated reports. To infect the Superior's ears is a greater crime than to poison the drinking fountain or to steal a treasure, because the only treasure of religious is the esteem of their Superior, and the pure water which refreshes their souls is the encouraging and benevolent words of the same Superior.

Some, by imprudence or under the influence of a highly coloured or impressionable imagination which carries everything to extremes (we would not say through malice), render themselves often guilty of crying acts of injustice and ruin a religious. What is uncertain they relate as certain, and what is mere conjecture they take as the base of grave suspicions. Several facts which, taken individually, constitute scarcely a fault, they group together, and so make a mountain out of a few grains of sand. An act which, seen in its entirety, would be worthy of praise, they mutilate in such a fashion as to show it in an unfavourable light. Enemies of the positive degree, they lavish with prodigality the words _often, very much, exceedingly,_ etc. When they have only one or two witnesses, they make use of the word _everybody_, thereby leaving you under the impression that the rumour is scattered broadcast. On such statements, how can a Superior pronounce judgment?