The days we spent at Monte Oliveto were golden days. For we not only slept there one, but several nights, and the Abate declared we could remain as long as we might care to. Nothing could be more melancholy and wild than the country into which we had come. It is the most desolate part of all that strange desolation which lies to the southeast of Siena. The mountain on which the monastery is built is surrounded on every side but one by deep, abrupt ravines. Behind it rise higher mountains, bare and bleak and gray, like gigantic ash-piles, and on the very highest peak is the wretched little village of Chiusure. The other hills around are lower, and from the road by the convent gateway one can see Siena, pale and blue on the horizon, and southward, over the barren hill-tops, Monte Amiata. But Monte Oliveto, with its gardens and orchards and vineyards, is a green place in the midst of the barrenness. The mountain-sides are terraced, and olives and vines grow almost to the bottom of the ravine. It was said in old times that the Bishop of Arezzo was commanded in a vision to call the monastery after the Mount in Jerusalem. Now-a-days sceptics say the trees on the terraces explain the name, forgetting that in its beginning this hill was as bare as the others. Why cannot it be believed, for the legend's sake, that the olives were planted afterwards because of the name?

The first morning, the Abate took us to see the frescos representing the life of Saint Benedict, painted on the walls of the large cloister. I will be honest, and confess that they disappointed us. I doubt whether the artists were very proud of them. Luca Signorelli, before he had finished the first side of the cloister, gave up the work, as it is not likely he would have done had he cared much for it. Sodoma, when he took his place, was at first so careless that the then abbot took him to task, but the artist calmly told him more could not be expected for the price that was paid him. Certainly with neither were these frescos a labor of love, and this one feels at once. One wonders if this could have been the same Sodoma who painted the Saint Sebastian in Florence, and yet there is more charm in his pictures than in those of Signorelli. But what we cared for most were his portraits of himself, with heavy hair hanging about his face, and wearing the cloak the Milanese gentleman, turned monk, had given him, and of his wife and child; and the pictures of the raven and the other pets he brought with him to the monastery, to the wonder of the good monks. It is a pity every one cannot look at these frescos with such loving, reverential eyes as the Abate. He had shown them probably to hundreds of visitors; he had seen them almost every day for the many years he had been at Monte Oliveto; but his pleasure in them was as fresh as if it dated but from yesterday. He told the story of each in turn,—of how in this one the great Saint Benedict had set the devil to flight, and how in that he had by a miracle recalled an erring brother; and once he pointed to a palm-tree in a background. Sodoma, he said, had seen and admired a palm in the garden of the monastery, and so, after his realistic fashion, had painted it in just as he had his pets. That very tree was in the garden still; he would show it to us if we liked.

There never was such another garden! It is close to the large brick house or palace by the gateway, where in old times lay visitors were lodged, and beyond which no woman was ever allowed to pass. It is small, but in it the monks only raised the rarest trees and plants. Here grew the precious herbs out of which in the pharmacy, whose windows overlook the quiet green enclosure, they prepared the healing draughts for which people came from far and near. The pharmacy is closed now. There is dust in the corners and on the quaint old chairs. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. But brass scales are still on the heavy wooden counter, and pestle and mortar behind it, and glass retorts of strange shapes in the corners and above the doors. Majolica jars all marked with the three mountains, the cross, and the olive-branch,—the stemma of the monastic order,—are ranged on the brown shelves, many of the large ones carefully sealed, while from the smaller come forth strange odors of myrrh and incense and rare ointments. As in the refectory, everything here is in order for the monks when they return. But they will find more change in the garden below. The rare plants, the ebony and the hyssop, the cactuses and the palm (which made us think less of Sodoma's frescos than we had before), the pomegranates and the artichokes, are all there. But weeds grow in the paths, and by the old gray well, and in among the herbs; roses have run riot in the centre of the garden and turned it into a wild tangled growth. To us it seemed the loveliest spot in Monte Oliveto. The hours spent in it were like a beautiful idyl of Theocritus or Shelley. The sun shone and the air was filled with sweet spicy scents. To one side was the gray mountain, to the other dense cypresses, and above a blue, cloudless sky. The roses were still in bloom, and as we lingered there, the Abate went from bush to bush and picked for me a large bunch of fragrant buds. I hope if the monks ever do come back that, while they throw open the windows of the pharmacy and let the light in again upon the majolica and the dark woodwork, they will leave the gates of the garden locked. It is fairer in its confusion than it ever could be with weeded paths and well-clipped bushes.

The Abate took us everywhere,—through the empty guest-chambers of the palace to the tower, now a home for pigeons, from the top of which one has a wide view of the country, which with its squares of olives and its gray hills and fields marked by deep furrows, as if by boundary lines, looks like a large map or geological chart,—through the monastery, with its three hundred rooms with now but three monks to occupy them; its cloisters, for there are two besides the large frescoed one; its loggie, where geraniums and other green plants were growing; its great refectory, beyond the door of which fowl or flesh meat never passed, and which is now used no longer; and its library, at the very top of the house, where rows of white vellum volumes are ready for the students who so seldom come. Then he led us to the church, where there are more altars than monks to pray before them, and a wonderful choir with inlaid stalls; and in and out of little chapels, one of which contains the grotto where blessed Bernardo Tolomei, the founder of the order, lived for many years after he came to the wilderness, while another was the first church used by the brotherhood, and the Virgin with angels playing to her on harps and mandolins, above the altar, was painted long before Signorelli and Sodoma began their work. Then there was the lemon-grove to be seen, where the Abate filled our pockets with the ripe fruit which we were to keep, he said, in case we might be thirsty on the road some day when there was no wine or water near by to drink. And after that there was still to be visited the wine-press, with its deep shadows and dark corners and long subterranean passage to the room below, where men were filling small casks from large butts, and then carrying them off on their shoulders to be weighed and stored above. We had to taste the wine, and I think it, together with the sunshine and the flowers, must have gone to our heads that morning and stayed there so long as we were at Monte Oliveto, for everything about us seemed to belong less to the actual world than to a dreamland full of wonder and beauty, and sometimes of pathos.

It was the same in the afternoon, when the Abate had gone about his work,—for he is a busy man, like the centurion with many under him,—and J. and I wandered alone over the gray hills up to Chiusure. Life with its hardships must be real enough to the people of this little village, in which seeds of pestilence sown hundreds of years ago still bear the bitter fruit of wretchedness. It seems as if the brick walls which could not keep out the plague have ever since successfully barred the way to all prosperity, for generation after generation is born within them but to live and die in poverty. We saw melancholy figures there,—old hags of women, with thin white hair and bent almost double under heavy bundles of wood, toiling up steep stony streets with bare feet, and others crouching in the gloom opposite open doorways. Even the little priest, who, in his knee-breeches and long frock-coat and braided smoking-cap with tassels dangling in his eyes, was humorous enough to look at, was pathetic in his way. For after he had shown us his church with its decorations, poor as the people who worship in it, and offered us a glass of wine in his own parlor, he spread on the table before us some broken pieces of glass easily put together, on which a picture was painted. Was it of value? he asked, so eagerly that he told without further words the story of wants but ill supplied. He was willing to sell it, but he did not know what it was worth. Could we tell him? No, we could not, we said, for we really knew nothing about it, though we feared the hopes he had set upon it would never be realized. And then sadly he gathered together the pieces and put them away again in their newspaper wrapping.

It was more cheerful outside the gateway. There, in the late afternoon, the gray olives by the way were more clearly defined against the sky, and the gray ravines below more indistinct. Beyond, the hills, now all purple and soft, rolled away to the horizon and to the brilliant red sky above. One or two lights were lit in distant farm-houses, and once we heard a far-off bell. Before us the white road led by one green hill on whose top was a circle of cypresses, and in its centre a black cross, as in so many old pictures.

But the strangest part of this dream-life was the friendship that sprung up between us and the monks. I should not have been more surprised if Saint Benedict and Blessed Bernardo had come back to earth to make friends with us. It was not only that the Abate acted as our guide through the monastery,—this he does for every visitor who comes, since the Government took possession of it and turned it into a public art-gallery and pension for artists,—but he came to our room early in the morning to drink his coffee with us, and in the evening, after he had said his Office, for a little talk. And when we had finished our supper we sat together long over our wine, talking now in French, now in English, now in Italian, and occasionally understanding each other. Like all good fellows, we too had our jokes. But the Abate's favorite was to tell how he had seen us coming up the mountain, monsieur push-pushing the velocipede and madame puff-puffing behind him. Even Dom Giuseppe, the other monk,—the third was away,—relaxed from the dignity with which he had first met us, and took part in the talk and the laughter. Unreal as seemed these late suppers in the long refectory in the dim light, with Pirro forever jumping after choice morsels, while Lupo and his family growled with rage and envy from under the table, we strayed even farther into Wonderland the second day after our arrival, when both monks went out for a ride on the tricycle along the mulberry walk and by Blessed Bernardo's grotto.

The last day of our stay a number of visitors arrived,—a priest from Perugia, two nuns, and two English ladies. They were not expected, and dinner had to be prepared for them. The Abate is never pleased when guests come without giving him warning. When we met him in the refectory a little after twelve, we could see his patience had been tried. We must pardon him for being late, he said, but he had had to find something to eat for all these people. Were they to dine with us? we asked. No, indeed, was his answer; they were not members of the community. This confirmed our doubts as to whether we might not be monks without knowing it; for the first morning the Abate had given us a key of the great front door by which we could let ourselves in at all hours, without any ringing of bells or calling of porters; so that we felt as if we belonged to the convent. These visitors were the thorns in his present life, the Abate continued, and we were his roses. Then he brought out a bottle of the vino santo which he makes himself and prizes so highly that he never sells it as he does the other wines, and a plate of grapes for which he had sent a great distance. And when dinner was over he bade the servant put all that was left of grapes and wine away. They were for the community, and not for common folk. He introduced us to the Perugian priest, who might possibly, he said, be of use to us in Perugia. The latter almost embraced J. in his protestations of good-will, and came running back several times to press his hand, and say in a French of his own invention that we must call often during our stay in his city.