easy
temperaments, who passed their waking hours in prayer, and when they were
tired of praying relaxed with sleep.

Besides these five hermits, who always dwelt in the rocks above, there
were, below, several Lamas who had charge of the unoccupied houses of the
Lamasery. These by no means, like the former, looked at life in its
refined and mystical aspect; they were, on the contrary, absorbed in the
realities of this world; they were, in fact, herdsmen. In the great
house where we were installed, there were two big Lamas who poetically
passed their time in herding some twenty cattle, in milking the cows,
making butter and cheese, and looking after the juvenile calves. These
bucolics seemed little to heed contemplation or prayer: they sent forth,
indeed, frequent invocations to Tsong-Kaba, but this was always on
account of their beasts, because their cows mutinied and would not be
milked, or because the calves capered out of bounds over the valley. Our
arrival afforded them a little diversion from the monotony of pastoral
life. They often paid us a visit in our chamber, and always passed in
review the volumes of our small travelling library, with that timid and
respectful curiosity which simple and illiterate persons ever manifest
towards the productions of the intellect. When they found us writing,
they forgot cows, and calves, and milk, and cheese, and butter, and would
stand for hours together motionless, their eyes fixed upon our crow-quill
as it ran over the paper, and left impressed there characters, the
delicacy and novelty of which were matters of ecstatic amazement to these
simple creatures.

The little Lamasery of Tchogortan pleased us beyond our hopes. We never
once regretted Kounboum any more than the prisoner regrets his dungeon
after he has attained liberty. The reason was that we, too, felt
ourselves emancipated. We were no longer under the ferule of Sandara the
Bearded, of that hard and pitiless taskmaster, who, while giving us
lessons of Thibetian, seemed to have undertaken also to discipline us in
patience and humility. The desire to attain knowledge had made us submit
to his ill-treatment, but our departure from Kounboum afforded a joyful
opportunity of throwing off this leech which had, for five whole months,
obstinately remained stuck to our existence. Besides, the success we had
already achieved in the study of the Thibetian tongue, exempted us from
the future necessity of having a maste