When her fingers were too tired to spell another word, I had for the first time a keen sense of my deprivations.
The time requisite for the several degrees is unknown, and may have been determined by the Patres, who conferred them in a solemn ceremony called Sacramentum, in which the initial step was an oath never to divulge what should be revealed, and for which the mystic had been specially prepared by lustral purification, prolonged abstinence, and severe deprivations.
The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating the least part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation.