radise--Wine-pressers again--Rich stores--Good
samaritans--Quaint old town--Bygone prosperity--Lorenzo--Marriage
made in heaven--House inspected--On the bridge--At the
station--Kindly offer--Glorious sunset--Loretta's good-bye--"What
shall it be?"--Flying moments--As the train rolls off.

All this passed before us as a vision whilst we sat in those wonderful
cloisters. We imagined the scene in all its ancient glory. We saw monks
pacing to and fro in their picturesque Benedictine dress. The proud step
of a mitred abbot echoed as it passed onwards in pomp and ceremony and
disappeared up the staircase to the palace of King Martin the Humble:
far more humble and conciliating than the uncrowned kings of Poblet. We
heard the monotone of the Miserere ascending through the dim aisles of
the great church, the monks bowing their heads in mock humility. We saw
Martin the Humble take the throne-seat to the right of the altar as
though he felt himself least of all the assembled. And we saw that
solitary death-bed of Wharton the self-banished whilst yet in his youth,
and marvelled what silent, secret sorrow had bid him flee the world.
Everything had passed away; kings and monks, wealth and power, and
to-day the silence of death reigns in Poblet.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF POBLET.]

When our modest feast was over, and H. C. had tried for the third
time to extract a final drop of Laffitte from the second empty bottle,
we left Francisco to gather up the fragments, and without the
custodian--who was now taking a refreshing sleep after his appreciated
bumper--wandered about the ruins as we would, realising all their beauty
and influence, all the true spirit of the past that overshadowed them.
Every room and court was filled with a crowd of cowled monks and mitred
abbots. Up crumbling and picturesque' stairways we saw a shadowy
procession ascending; the ghostly face of Martin the Humble looked down
upon us from the exquisite windows of his palace, shorn of nearly all
their tracery.

It was difficult to leave it all, but we wanted to see a little of the
outer world. Francisco committed his basket to the guardian--now wide
awake--and in a few moments we found ourselves outside the great
entrance, facing the crumbling dependencies. Beyond the gateway we
turned to the left and passed up the valley. It was broad and
far-reaching, and the monastery looked in the centre of a great
undulating plain. From the slopes of a