s, and
simple-minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the
monastery, he was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an
English tongue.

He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries,
Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley Novels. Thence he led me to the
cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the
brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his
religious name upon a board--names full of legendary suavity and
interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the
library, where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the
"Odes et Ballades," if you please, and even Moliere, to say nothing of
innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians.
Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake
bread, and make cart-wheels, and take photographs; where one
superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of
rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his
own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of
the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and
join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his private
hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he
likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature;
while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot
employs himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was
consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his
mother was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of
consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes
you glad to think they let her in.

In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren
fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if
we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to
ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands,
almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or refused by the usual
negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain
air of contrition, as of a man who was steering very close to evil.

The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals
a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins
somewhere in September and lasts till