He had hoped for his last day at La Trappe a morning of quiet, when his mind might lounge, a mixture of spiritual siesta and of working, charmed by a round of offices, and not at all that the idea persistent and obstinate that he must quit the monastery next day, would spoil all the pleasures he had promised himself.

Now that he had no longer to cleanse himself, and pass under the winnowing of confession, to present himself for the Communion in the morning, he remained irresolute, not knowing any longer how to occupy his time, terrified by the recommencement of that life of the world which would upset all the barriers of forgetfulness, and would get at him at once above all the broken defences of the cloister.

Like a captured animal, he began to rub against the bars of his cage, made the tour of the enclosure, filling his sight with those places where he had tasted hours so kindly and so cruel.

He felt in himself a shaking of the ground, a disturbance of soul, an absolute discouragement before the prospect of re-entering into his habitual existence, of mixing himself anew with the coming and going of men, and he experienced at the same time a great fatigue of brain.

He dragged himself along the walks in a state of complete discomfort, in one of those attacks of religious spleen which determine, while they last during years, the "tÆdium vitÆ" of the cloisters. He had a horror of any life but this, and the soul overwrought by prayers was failing in a body insufficiently rested and ill-nourished; it had no further desire, asked only to be let alone, to sleep, to fall into one of those states of torpor in which everything becomes indifferent, in which one ends by losing consciousness gently, by being stifled without suffering.

He might well, to re-act on him as a consolation, promise himself to assist in Paris at the offices of the Benedictine nuns, that he would keep himself on the outskirts of society, to himself; and he was at once obliged to answer that these subterfuges are impossible, that the very movement of the town is against all decoys, that isolation in a chamber is in no degree like the solitude of a cell, that masses celebrated in a chapel open to the public cannot be likened to the private Offices of the Trappists.

Then what is the good of trying to misunderstand? It is with the soul as with the body, which is better on the sea shore, or in the mountains, than shut up in a town. There is a better spiritual air even at Paris, in certain religious quarters of the left bank, than in the districts situated on the other bank, more lively in certain churches, more pure, for example, at Notre Dame des Victoires than in churches such as La TrinitÉ and the Madeleine.

But the monastery was, as it were, the true shore and high plateau of the soul. There the atmosphere was balsamic, strength returned, lost appetite for God was there recovered, there was health succeeding weakness, a regimen, fortified and sustained, instead of languor and the restricted exercises of the towns.

The conviction that no trickery was possible to him at Paris brought him to the ground. He wandered from cell to chapel, from chapel to woods, awaiting the dinner hour with impatience, in order to be able to speak to someone, for in his disorder a new need arose. For more than a week he had spent the whole afternoon without opening his lips; he did not suffer from it, was even satisfied with his silence, but since he was pressed by this idea of departure he could not keep silence any longer, thought aloud in the walks to assuage the sensations of his swelling heart, that stifled him.

M. Bruno was too sagacious not to guess the uneasiness of his companion, who became by turns taciturn and over talkative during the meal. He made, however, as though he saw nothing, but after he had said grace he disappeared, and Durtal, who was strolling near the great pond, was surprised to see him coming in his direction with Father Etienne.

They greeted him, and the Trappist with a smile proposed to him, if he had made no other plan, to pass his time in visiting the convent, and especially the library, which the Father prior would be delighted to show him.

"If convenient to me! I shall be delighted!" cried Durtal.

All three returned towards the abbey; the monk lifted the latch of a little door fashioned in a wall near the church, and Durtal entered a minute cemetery, planted with wooden crosses on grass graves.

There was no inscription, no flower in this enclosure which they traversed; the monk pushed another door, which opened on a long corridor smelling of rats. At the end of this gallery, Durtal recognized the staircase he had ascended one morning for his confession in the prior's room. They left it on their right, turned into another gallery, and the guest-master led them into an immense hall, pierced by high windows, decorated with eighteenth century pier-glasses, and grisailles; it was furnished only with benches and stalls, above which was a single chair sculptured and painted with abbatial arms, which marked the place of Dom Anselm.

"Oh! this chapter-house has nothing monastic," said Father Etienne, designating the profane pictures on the walls; "we have kept just as it was the drawing-room of this old chateau, but I beg you to believe that this decoration hardly pleases us."

"And what takes place in this hall?"

"Well, we meet here after mass; the chapter opens by reading the martyrology, followed by the concluding prayers of Prime. Then we read a passage from the rule, and the Father abbot comments on it. Lastly, we practise the exercise of humility, that is to say, that whoever among us has committed any fault against the rule, prostrates himself, and avows it before his brethren."

They went thence to the refectory. This room had also a high ceiling, but was smaller, and garnished with tables in form of a horse-shoe. A kind of large cruets, each containing two half-bottles of wine and water, separated by a water bottle, and before them, instead of glasses, cups of brown earthenware, with two handles, were placed at equal distances. The monk explained that these sham cruets with three branches indicated the place of two covers, each monk having a right to his half bottle of drink, and partaking with his neighbour the water in the bottle.

"This pulpit," said Father Etienne, pointing out a large wooden box fixed against the wall, "is destined for the reader of the week, the father who reads during the meal."

"How long does the meal last?"

"Just half an hour."

"Yes; and the cookery which we eat is delicate in comparison with that which is served to the monks," said the oblate.

"I should lie if I were to affirm that we make good cheer," answered the guest-master. "Do you know that the hardest thing to bear, in the earlier time especially, is the want of seasoning in our dishes. Pepper and spices are forbidden by our rule, and as no salt-cellar has place on our table, we swallow our food just as it is, and it is for the most part scarcely salted.

"On certain days in summer, when one sweats in big drops, this becomes almost impossible, the gorge rises. Yet one must begin upon this warm paste, and at least swallow a sufficient quantity not to give out before the next day; we look at each other discouraged, unable to get any further; there is not another word to define our dinner in the month of August, it is a punishment."

"And all, the Father abbot, the prior, the fathers, the brethren, have the same food?"

"All. Now come and see the dormitory."

They ascended to the first floor. An immense corridor, furnished like a stable with wooden boxes, extended before them, closed at each end by a door.

"This is our lodging," said the monk, as he stopped before one of these cases. Cards were placed on them, affixing the name of each monk, and the first bore a ticket with this inscription: "The Father Abbot."

Durtal felt the bed against one of the two walls.

It was as rough as a carding comb, and as biting as a file. It was composed of a simple quilted paillasse extended on a plank; no sheets, but a prison coverlet of grey wool, a sack of straw instead of pillows.

"God! it is very hard," said Durtal, and the monk laughed.

"Our habits soften the roughness of this straw mattress," he said; "for our rule does not allow us to undress, we may only take off our shoes, therefore we sleep entirely clad, our head wrapped in our hood."

"And it must be cold in this corridor swept by all the winds," added Durtal.

"No doubt the winter is rough here, but it is not that season which alarms us; we live pretty well, even without fire in time of frost, but the summer—! If you knew what it is to wake in habits still steeped in sweat, not dried since the evening before, it is terrible!

"Then, though because of the great heat we have often hardly slept, we must before dawn jump out of bed, and begin at once the great night office, the Vigils, which last at least two hours. Even after twenty years of Trappist life, one cannot but suffer at that getting up; in chapel you fight against sleep which crushes you, you sleep while you hear a verse chanted, you strive to keep awake, in order to be able to chant another, and fall asleep again.

"One ought to be able to turn the key on thought, and one is incapable of it.

"Truly, I assure you that even beyond the corporal fatigue which explains that state in the morning, there is then an aggression of the demon, an incessant temptation to make us recite the office badly."

"And you all undergo this strife?"

"All; and this does not hinder," concluded the monk, whose face was radiant, "this does not hinder us from being very happy here.

"Because all these trials are nothing beside the deep and intimate joys which our good God gives us. Ah! He is a generous Master; he pays us a hundred-fold for our poor sorrows."

As they spoke, they had passed through the corridor and had arrived at its other end.

The monk opened the door, and Durtal was astounded to find himself in a vestibule just opposite his own cell.

"I did not think," he said, "that I was living so near you."

"This house is a regular labyrinth—but M. Bruno will take you to the library where the Father prior is waiting for you; for I must go to my business. We shall meet presently," he said, with a smile.

The library was situated on the other side of the staircase by which Durtal reached his chamber. It was large, furnished with shelves from top to bottom, occupied in the middle by a sort of counter table on which also were spread rows of books.

Father Maximin said to Durtal,

"We are not very rich, but at any rate we possess tools for work fairly complete on theology and the monography of the cloisters."

"You have superb volumes," cried Durtal, who looked at magnificent folios in splendid bindings with armorial bearings.

"Wait; here are the works of Saint Bernard in a fine edition," and the monk presented to Durtal enormous volumes, printed in heavy letters on crackling paper.

"When I think that I promised myself to make acquaintance with Saint Bernard in this very abbey which he founded, and here I am on the eve of my departure, and have read nothing!"

"You do not know his works?"

"Yes; scattered fragments of his sermons and of his letters. I have run through some selectÆ mediocres of his works, but that is all."

"He is our chief master here; but he is not the only one of our ancestors in Saint Benedict whom the convent possesses," said the monk with a certain pride. "See," and he pointed out on the shelves some heavy folios, "here: 'Saint Gregory the Great,' 'Venerable Bede,' 'Saint Peter Damian,' 'Saint Anselm.' ... And your friends are there," he said, following Durtal with a glance as he read the titles of the volumes, "'Saint Teresa,' 'Saint John of the Cross,' 'Saint Magdalen of Pazzi,' 'Saint Angela,' 'Tauler,' ... and she who like Sister Emmerich dictated her conversations with Jesus during her ecstasy." And the prior took from the range of books in octavo, "The Dialogues of Saint Catherine of Siena."

"That Dominican nun is terrible for the priests of her time," the monk went on. "She insists on their misdeeds, reproaches them roundly with selling the Holy Spirit, with practising sortilege, and with using the Sacrament to compose evil charms."

"And there are besides the disorderly vices of which she accuses them in the series concerning the sin of the flesh," added the oblate.

"Certainly, she does not mince her words, but she had the right to take up that tone, and menace in the name of the Lord, for she was truly inspired by Him. Her doctrine was drawn from divine sources. 'Doctrina ejus infusa non acquisita,' says the Church in the bull of her canonization. Her Dialogues are admirable; the pages in which God exposes the holy frauds which He sometimes uses to recall men to good, the passages in which she treats of the monastic life, of that barque which possesses three ropes: chastity, obedience, and poverty, and which faces the tempest under the conduct of the Holy Spirit, are delightful. She reveals herself in her work the pupil of the well-beloved disciple and of Saint Thomas Aquinas. One might believe that one heard the Angel of the School paraphrasing the last of the Evangelists."

"Yes," said the oblate, striking in, "if Saint Catherine of Siena does not give herself to the high speculations of Mysticism; if she does not analyze like Saint Teresa the mysteries of divine love, nor trace the itinerary of souls destined to the perfect life, she reflects directly at least the conversations of Heaven. She calls, she loves! You have read, sir, her treatises on Discretion and Prayer?"

"No. I have read Saint Catherine of Genoa, but the books of Saint Catherine of Siena have never fallen into my hands."

"And what do you think of this collection?"

Durtal looked at the title, and made a face.

"I see that Suso hardly delights you."

"I should tell a lie if I assured you that the dissertations of this Dominican pleased me. First, however illuminated the man may be, he does not attract me. Without speaking of the frenzy of his penances, what scrupulousness of devotion and narrowness of piety was his! Think that he could not decide on drinking till he had first, as a preliminary, divided his beverage into five parts. He thought thus to honour the five wounds of the Saviour, and, moreover, he swallowed his last mouthful in two gulps to call up before himself the water and the blood which flowed from the side of the Word.

"No! these sort of things would never enter into my head; I would never admit that such practices would glorify Christ.

"And remark well that this love of pounding things small, this passion for small blessings, is found in all his work. His God is so difficult to content, so scrupulous, so meddling, that no one would ever get to heaven if they believed what he said. This God of his is the fault-finder of eternity, the miser of paradise.

"On the whole, Suso expands himself in impetuous discourses on trifles; then what with his insipid allegories, his morose 'Colloquy on the Nine Rocks' knocks me down."

"You will, however, admit that his study on the Union of the Soul is substantial, and that the 'Office of the Eternal Wisdom' which he composed is worth reading?"

"I cannot say, Father, I do not now remember that Office; but I recollect tolerably well the treatise on 'Union with God,' it seems to me more interesting than the rest, but you will admit that it is very short ... and then Saint Teresa has also elucidated that question of human renunciation and divine fruition; and, hang it then...!"

"Come," said the oblate, with a smile, "I give up the attempt to make you a fervent reader of the good Suso."

"For us," said Father Maximin, "if we had a little time to work, this ought to be the leaven of our meditations, the subject of our reading;" and he took down a folio which contained the works of Saint Hildegarde, abbess of the Convent of Rupertsberg.

"She, you see, is the great prophetess of the New Testament. Never, since the visions of Saint John at Patmos, has the Holy Spirit communicated to an earthly being with such fulness and light. In her 'Heptachronon' she predicts Protestantism and the captivity of the Vatican; in her 'Scivias, or Knowledge of the Ways of the Lord,' which was edited, according to her recital, by a monk of the Convent of Saint DÉsibode, she interprets the symbols of the Scriptures, and even the nature of the elements. She also wrote a diligent commentary on our rules and enthusiastic pages on sacred music, on literature, on art, which she defines admirably; a reminiscence, half-effaced, of a primitive condition from which we have fallen since Eden. Unfortunately, to understand her, it is necessary to give oneself to minute researches and patient studies. Her apocalyptic style has something retractile, which retreats and shuts itself up all the more when one will open it."

"I am well aware that I am losing my little Latin," said M. Bruno. "What a pity there is not a translation of her works, with glosses to help."

"They are untranslatable," said the father, who went on,

"Saint Hildegarde is, with Saint Bernard, one of the purest glories of the family of Saint Benedict. How predestinate was that virgin, who was inundated with interior light at the age of three, and died at eighty-two, having lived all her life in the cloister!"

"And add that she was as a permanent state, prophetical!" cried the oblate. "She is like no other woman saint; all in her is astonishing, even the way in which God addresses her, for He forgets that she is a woman, and calls her 'man.'

"And she," added the prior, "employs, when she wishes to designate herself, the singular expression, 'the paltry form.' But here is another writer who is dear to us," and he showed Durtal the two volumes of Saint Gertrude. "She is again one of our great nuns, an abbess truly Benedictine, in the exact sense of the word, for she caused the Holy Scriptures to be explained to her nuns, wished that the piety of her daughters should be based on science, that this faith should be sustained by liturgical food, if I may say so."

"I know nothing of her but her 'Exercises,'" observed Durtal, "and they have left with me the memory of echoed words, of things said again from the sacred books. So far as one may judge from simple extracts, she does not appear to have original expression, and to be far below Saint Teresa or Saint Angela."

"No doubt," answered the monk. "But she comes near Saint Angela by the gift of familiarity when she converses with Christ, and also by the loving vehemence of what she says; only all this is transformed on leaving its proper source; she thinks liturgically; and this is so true, that the least of her reflections at once presents itself to her clothed in the language of the Gospels and the Psalms.

"Her 'Revelations,' her 'Insinuations,' her 'Herald of Divine Love,' are marvellous from this point of view; and then her prayer to the Blessed Virgin is exquisite which opens with this phrase: 'Hail, O white lily of the Trinity, resplendent, and always at rest....'

"As a continuation of her works, the Benedictine Fathers of Solesmes have edited also the 'Revelations' of Saint Mechtilde, her book on 'Special Grace,' and her 'Light of the Divinity'; they are there on that shelf...."

"Let me show you," said in his turn M. Bruno, "guides wisely marked out for the soul which escapes from itself, and will attempt to climb the eternal mountains," and he handed to Durtal the "Lucerna Mystica" of Lopez Ezquerra, the quartos of Scaramelli, the volumes of Schram, the "Christian Asceticism" of Ribet, the "Principles of Mystic Theology" of Father Seraphin.

"And do you know this?" continued the oblate; the volume he offered was called "On Prayer," was anonymous, and bore at the bottom of its first page "Solesmes, printed at the Abbey of Saint Cecilia," and above the printed date, 1886, Durtal made out the word written in ink, "Confidential."

"I have never seen this little book, which seems moreover to have never been brought into the market. Who is the author?"

"The most extraordinary nun of our time, the abbess of the Benedictine nuns at Solesmes. I regret only that you are going so soon, for I should have been happy to let you read it.

"As far as the document is concerned, it is of a most extraordinary science, and it contains admirable quotations from Saint Hildegarde and Cassien: as far as Mysticism is concerned, Mother Saint Cecilia evidently only reproduces the works of her predecessors, and she tells us nothing very new. Nevertheless, I remember a passage which seems to me more special, more personal. Wait...."

And the oblate turned over a few pages. "Here it is:

"'The spiritualized soul does not appear exposed to temptation properly so-called, but by a divine permission it is called upon to conflict with the Demon, spirit against spirit.... The contact with the Demon is then perceived on the surface of the soul, under the form of a burn at once spiritual and sensible.... If the soul hold good in its union with God, if it be strong, the pain, however sharp, is bearable; but if the soul commit any slight imperfection, even inwardly, the Demon makes just so much way, and carries his horrible burning more forward, until by generous acts the soul can repulse him further."

"This touch of Satan, which produces an almost material effect on the most intangible parts of our being, is, you will admit, at least curious," concluded the oblate, as he closed the volume.

"Mother Saint Cecilia is a remarkable strategist of the soul," said the prior, "but ... but ... this work, which she edited for the daughters of her abbey, contains, I think, some rash propositions which have not been read without displeasure at Rome."

"To have done with our poor treasures," he continued, "we have only on this side," and he pointed out a portion of the book-cases which covered the room, "long-winded works, the 'Cistercian Menology,' 'MignÉ's Patrology,' dictionaries of the lives of the saints, manuals of sacred interpretation, canon law, Christian apology, Biblical exegesis, the complete works of Saint Thomas, tools of work which we rarely employ, for as you know we are a branch of the Benedictine trunk vowed to a life of bodily labour and penance; we are men of sorrow for God, above all things. Here is M. Bruno, who uses these books; so do I at times, for I have special charge of spiritual matters in this monastery," added the monk with a smile.

Durtal looked at him; he handled the volumes with caressing hands, brooded over them with the blue lustre of his eye, laughed with the joy of a child as he turned their pages.

"What a difference between this monk who evidently adores his books, and the prior with his imperious profile and silent lips who heard his confession the second day;" then thinking of all these Trappists, the severity of their countenances, the joy of their eyes, Durtal said to himself that these Cistercians were not at all as the world believed, solemn and funereal people, but that, quite the contrary, they were the gayest of men.

"Now," said Father Maximin, "the reverend Father abbot has charged me with a commission; knowing that you will leave us to-morrow, he is anxious, now that he is better, to pass at least some minutes with you. He will be free this evening: will it trouble you to join him after Compline?"

"Not at all; I shall be glad to talk with Dom Anselm."

"That is understood, then."

They went downstairs. Durtal thanked the prior, who re-entered the enclosure of the corridors, and the oblate, who went up to his cell. He trifled about, and in spite of the torment of his departure, which haunted him, reached the evening without too much trouble.

The "Salve Regina," which he heard perhaps for the last time thus sung by male voices; that airy chapel built of sound, and evaporating with the close of the antiphon, in the smoke of the tapers, stirred him to the bottom of his soul; the Trappist monastery showed itself truly charming this evening. After the office, they said the Rosary, not as at Paris, where they recite a Pater, ten Aves, and a Gloria, and so over again; here they said in Latin a Pater, an Ave, a Gloria, and began again till in that manner they had finished several decades.

This rosary was said on their knees, half by the prior, half by all the monks. It went at so rapid a pace that it was scarcely possible to distinguish the words, but as soon as it was ended, at a signal there was a great silence, and each one prayed with his head in his hands.

And Durtal took notice of the ingenious system of conventual prayers: after the prayers purely vocal like these, came mental prayer, personal petitions, stimulated and set a-going by the very machine of paternosters.

"Nothing is left to chance in religion; every exercise which seems at first useless has a reason for its being," he said to himself, as he went out into the court. "And the fact is, that the rosary, which seems to be only a humming-top of sounds, fulfils an end. It reposes the soul wearied with the supplications which it has recited, applying itself to them, thinking of them; it hinders it from babbling and reciting to God always the same petitions, the same complaints; it allows it to take breath, to take rest, in prayers in which it can dispense with reflection, and, in fact, the rosary occupies in prayer, those hours of fatigue in which one would not pray.... Ah! here is the Father abbot."

The Trappist expressed to him his regret at visiting him only thus for a few moments; then after he had answered Durtal, who inquired after the state of his health, which he hoped was at last re-established, he proposed to him to walk in the garden, and begged him not to inconvenience himself by not smoking cigarettes if he had a mind to do so.

And the conversation turned on Paris. Dom Anselm asked for some information, and ended by saying with a smile, "I see by scraps of newspapers which come to me, that society just now is infected with socialism. Everyone wishes to solve the famous social question. How does that get on?"

"How does that get on? Why, not at all! Unless you can change the souls of workmen and masters, and make them disinterested and charitable between to-day and to-morrow, in what can you expect these systems to end?"

"Well," said the monk, enwrapping the monastery with a gesture, "the question is solved here.

"As wages do not exist, all sources of conflicts are suppressed.

"As every task is according to aptitudes and powers, the fathers who are not strong-shouldered and big-armed fold the packages of chocolate, or make out the bills, and those who are robust dig the ground.

"I add that the equality in our cloisters is such that the prior and the abbot have no advantage over the other monks. At table the portions, and in the dormitory the paillasses, are identical. The sole profits of the abbot consist on the whole in the inevitable cares arising from the moral conduct and the temporal administration of an abbey. There is therefore no reason why the workmen of a convent should go on strike," concluded the abbot with a smile.

"Yes, but you are minimists, you suppress the family and woman, you live on nothing, and expect the only real recompense for your labours after death. How can you make the people in the towns understand that?"

"The social system may thus be summed up, as I think: the masters wish to profit by the workmen, who in their turn desire to be paid as much as possible for as little work as possible. Well, then, there is no way out of that."

"Exactly, and there is the sad part of it, for socialism in fact arises from kindly ideas, just ideas, and will always run up against egotism and gain, against the inevitable breakers of the sins of man.

"And your little chocolate factory gives you at least some income?"

"Yes; that saves us."

The abbot was silent for a second; then he went on,

"You know, sir, how a convent is founded. I take for example our Order. A domain and the lands about it are offered the Order on condition that it peoples them. The Order takes a handful of its monks, and settles them as a swarm on the soil given to it. There its task stops. The grain must spring up of itself, or to put it differently, the Trappists, severed from their mother-house, must gain their livelihood, and suffice for themselves.

"So when we took possession of these buildings we were so poor, that from bread to shoes everything was lacking; but we had no anxiety for the future, for there is no example in monastic history that Providence has not succoured abbeys who trusted in it. Little by little we drew our food from the estate, and we learnt useful trades; now we make our habits and our shoes; we reap our wheat and make our bread; our material existence is therefore assured, but the taxes crush us; therefore we have founded this factory, of which the report becomes better from year to year.

"In a year or two the building which shelters us, and for want of money we have been unable to repair, will tumble down, but if God then allows generous souls to come to our aid, perhaps we shall be in a condition to build a monastery, which is the wish of all of us; for indeed this hovel with its rooms in confusion, and its rotunda-chapel, is painful to us."

The abbot was silent again, then after a pause he said in a low voice, speaking to himself,

"It cannot be denied, a convent which has not the look of a cloister is an obstacle to vocations; the postulant has need—and this is quite natural—to mould himself in surroundings which please him, to encourage himself in a church which wraps him round, in a somewhat sombre chapel; and to obtain that result you want the Romanesque or Gothic style."

"Ah, yes, indeed. And have you many novices?"

"We have especially many subjects who desire to feel the life of Trappists, but the greater part do not succeed in supporting our way of life. Beside even the question of knowing whether the vocation of the beginners is imaginary or real, we are from the physical point of view clearly fixed after a fortnight's trial."

"Eating vegetables only must crush the most robust constitutions; I do not even understand how, leading an active life, you can bear it."

"The truth is that bodies obey where souls are resolute. Our ancestors endured the life of the Trappists very well. We want souls at the present day. I remember that when I made my probation in a Cistercian cloister I had no health, and yet had it been necessary I would have eaten stones!

"Moreover, the rule will soon be softened," pursued the abbot; "but in any case there is a country which, if there should be scarcity, assures us a good number of recruits, Holland."

And seeing Durtal's look of astonishment, the father said,

"Yes, in that Protestant country mystic vegetation is flourishing. Catholicism is all the more fervent that it is, if not persecuted, at least despised, drowned in the mass of Calvinists. Perhaps this belongs also to the nature of the soil, to its solitary plains, its silent canals, to the very taste of the Dutch for a regular and peaceable life; but in that little knot of Catholics the Cistercian vocation is always very common."

Durtal looked at the Trappist as he walked majestic and quiet, his head buried in his hood, his hands passed under his cincture.

From time to time his eyes grew bright inside his hood, and the amethyst which he wore on his finger sparkled in brief flames.

No sound was heard; at this hour the monastery was asleep. Durtal and the abbot were walking on the banks of the great pond, where the water was alive, it alone wakeful in the slumber of the woods, for the moon, which shone in a cloudless sky, sowed a myriad of goldfish, and this luminous spawn, fallen from the planet, mounted, descended, sparkled in a thousand little points of fire, of which the wind as it blew increased the brightness.

The abbot spoke no longer, and Durtal, who was thinking, intoxicated by the sweetness of the night, groaned suddenly. He had just considered that at this same hour the next day he would be at Paris, and seeing the monastery, whose pale front appeared at the end of a walk as at the end of a dark tunnel, he cried, thinking of all the monks who inhabited it,

"Ah! they are happy!"

And the abbot answered, "Too happy."

Then gently, in a low voice,

"Yes, it is true we enter here to do penance, to mortify ourselves, and we have hardly begun to suffer when God consoles us. He is so good that He Himself wishes to deceive Himself about our merits. If at certain moments He allows the Demon to persecute us, He gives us in exchange so much happiness that there is no proportion preserved between the recompense and the sorrow. Sometimes when I think of it, I ask myself how there still subsists that equilibrium that nuns and monks are charged to maintain, since neither of us suffer enough to neutralize the repeated sins of towns?"

The abbot stopped, and then went on pensively,

"The world does not even conceive that the austerity of the abbeys can profit it. The doctrine of mystical compensation escapes it entirely. It cannot represent to itself that the substitution of the innocent for the guilty is necessary when to suffer merited punishment is concerned. Nor does it explain to itself any more that in wishing to suffer for others, monks turn aside the wrath of heaven, and establish a solidarity in the good which is a counter-weight against the federation of evil. God knows, moreover, with what cataclysms the unconscious world would be menaced, if in consequence of a sudden disappearance of all the cloisters, the equilibrium which saves it were broken."

"The case has already presented itself," said Durtal, who while listening to the Trappist thought of the AbbÉ GÉvresin, and remembered how that priest had expressed himself on the same subject in nearly similar terms. "The Revolution, in fact, suppressed all convents with one stroke of a pen, but I think that the history of that time when so many hucksters were busy is still to be written. Instead of searching for documents on the acts, and even on the persons of the Jacobins, the archives of the religious orders which existed at that time should be ransacked.

"In working thus at the side of the Revolution, in sounding its neighbourhood, its foundations will be exhumed. Its causes will be brought to the surface, and it will certainly be discovered that in proportion to the suppression of convents, monstrous excesses had birth. Who knows if the demoniacal madness of Carrier or Marat do not accord with the death of an abbey whose sanctity preserved France for years."

"To be just," answered the abbot, "it is right to say that the Revolution destroyed ruins only. The rule of in commendam ended by giving the monasteries over to Satan. It was they, alas! that by the relaxation of their morals, inclined the balance, and drew down the lightning on the land.

"The Terror was only a consequence of their impiety. God, whom nothing longer withheld, let things take their course."

"Yes; but how can you now prove the necessity of compensations to a world which wanders out of the way in continued accesses of gain; how persuade it that it is an urgent need, as a preventive against new crises, to shelter towns behind the sacred bulwarks of cloisters?

"After the siege of 1870, Paris was wisely sheltered behind an immense net of impregnable forts; but is it not also indispensable to surround it with a cincture of prayers, to buttress its neighbourhood with conventual houses, to build everywhere in its suburbs convents of Poor Clares, Carmelites, Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament, monasteries which will be in some degree powerful citadels, destined to arrest the forward march of the armies of evil?

"Certainly the towns have great need of being guaranteed against infernal invasions by a sanitary defence of Orders.... But come, sir, I must not deprive you of necessary rest, I will join you to-morrow, before you quit our solitude. I have now but to say that you have only friends here, and that you will be always welcome. I hope that on your side you will keep no unfavourable memory of our poor hospitality, and that you will prove it in coming to see us again."

As they talked they had come in front of the guest-house.

The father pressed Durtal's hands, and slowly ascended the stairs, sweeping with his robe the silver dust of the steps, as he mounted, all white, in a ray of the moon.