he life. The men were harder than stones, pitiless
to themselves and to others. The place dreary, the rule most burdensome.
The rough robe would rake the skin and flesh from young bones. The harsh
discipline would crush the very frame of tender youth.

The other monks were less forbidding. They warmly encouraged the
aspiration, and the pair returned to their home, Hugh struggling to hide
the new fire from his aged friend. But the old man saw through the
artless cloakings and was in despair. He used every entreaty to save
Hugh for the good work he was doing, and to keep his darling at his
side. Hugh's affectionate heart and ready obedience gave way, and he
took a solemn oath not to desert his canonry, and so went back to his
parishing.

But then came, as it naturally would come to so charming and vigorous a
lad, the strong return of that Dame Nature who had been so long forked
forth by his cloistral life. A lady took a liking to this heavenly
curate. Other biographers hint at this pathetic little romance, and
cover up the story with tales of a wilderness of women; but the
metrical biographer is less discreetly vague, and breaks into a tirade
against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, net weavers, and
spiders--the fair sex. Still, he cannot refrain from giving us a graphic
picture of the presumptuous she-rascal who fell in love with Hugh, and
although most of his copyists excise his thirty-nine graphic lines of
Zuleika's portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not
of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly
veiled and partly strayed around her ivory neck. Her little ear, a
curved shell, bore up the golden mesh. Under the smooth clear white
brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss-cross hair in them,
and these disclosed and heightened the clear white of the skin. And her
nose, too--not flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the
fineness of geometry, with light, soft breath, and the sweet scent of
incense. Such shining eyes too: like emeralds starring her face with
light! And the face, blended lilies and roses in a third lovely hue that
one could not withdraw one's eyes from beholding. The gentle pout of her
red lips seemed to challenge kisses. Shining as glass, white as a bell
flower, she had a breast and head joined by a noble poised throat, which
baited the very hook of love. Upon her lily finger she wore a red and
golden ring. Even her frock was a m