Easter, and during which they eat
but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon,
twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. Their
meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each
is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence.
Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly over-eat themselves; our
meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion
from the labour of life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should
have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I
look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all
whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose
that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and
with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain
tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This,
at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live
healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in
colour; and the only morbid sign that I could observe, an unusual
brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general
impression of vivacity and strength.

Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, with what I can
only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. There is a note,
in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the
curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to
speak little. The note might have been spared; to a man the hospitallers
were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the
monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversation. With
the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of the world, they showed
themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of
subjects--in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack--and not without
a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices.

As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they
bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any view
of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion
of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay
phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say a bacchanalian, character; and
seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily
disperse