ble that a
quick manner of speaking, so different from theirs, is sufficient to
make them distinguish travellers, who are merely curious. The hour
of vespers approaching, I could go into the church to hear the nuns
sing; they were behind a black plose grating, through which nothing
could be seen. You only heard the noise of their wooden shoes, and
of the wooden benches as they raised them to sit down. Their singing
had nothing of sensibility in it, and I thought I could remark both
by their manner of praying, and in the conversation which I had
afterwards with the father Trappist, who directed them, that it was
not religious enthusiasm, such as we conceive it, but severe and
grave habits which could support such a kind of life. The tenderness
of piety would even exhaust the strength; a sort of ruggedness of
soul is necessary to so rude an existence.

The new Father Abbe of the Trappists, settled in the vallies of the
Canton of Fribourg, has added to the austerities of the order. One
can have no idea of the minute degrees of suffering imposed upon the
monks; they go so far as even to forbid them, when they have been
standing for some hours in succession, from leaning against the
wall, or wiping the perspiration from their forehead; in short every
moment of their life is filled with suffering, as the people of the
world fills theirs with enjoyment. They rarely live to be old, and
those to whom this lot falls, regard it as a punishment from heaven.
Such an establishment would be barbarous if any one was compelled to
enter it, or if there was the least concealment of what they suffer
there. But on the contrary, they distribute to whoever wishes to
read it, a printed statement, in which the rigors of the order are
rather exaggerated than softened; and yet there are novices who are
willing to take the vows, and those who are received never run away,
although they might do it without the least difficulty. The whole
rests, as it appears to me, upon the powerful idea of death; the
institutions and amusements of society are destined in the world to
turn our thoughts entirely upon life; but when the contemplation of
death gets a certain hold of the human heart, joined to a firm
belief in the immortality of the soul, there are no bounds to the
disgust which it may take to every thing which forms a subject of
interest in the world; and a state of suffering appearing the road
to a future life, such minds follow it with avidity, like