stronghold of the humanities, and generations of students had
cherished and added to the treasures of the famous library. But the
Benedictine rule was as famous for good works as for learning, and its
comparative abstention from dogmatic controversy and from the mechanical
devotion of some of the other orders had drawn to it men of superior
mind, who sought in the monastic life the free exercise of the noblest
activities rather than a sanctified refuge from action. This was
especially true of the monastery of Monte Cassino, whither many scholars
had been attracted and where the fathers had long had the highest name
for learning and beneficence. The monastery, moreover, in addition to
its charitable and educational work among the poor, maintained a school
of theology to which students came from all parts of Italy; and their
presence lent an unwonted life to the great labyrinth of courts and
cloisters.

The abbot, with whom de Crucis was well-acquainted, welcomed the
travellers warmly, making them free of the library and the archives and
pressing them to prolong their visit. Under the spell of these
influences they lingered on from day to day; and to Odo they were the
pleasantest days he had known. To be waked before dawn by the bell
ringing for lauds--to rise from the narrow bed in his white-washed cell,
and opening his casement look forth over the haze-enveloped valley, the
dark hills of the Abruzzi and the remote gleam of sea touched into being
by the sunrise--to hasten through hushed echoing corridors to the
church, where in a grey resurrection-light the fathers were intoning the
solemn office of renewal--this morning ablution of the spirit, so like
the bodily plunge into clear cold water, seemed to attune the mind to
the fullest enjoyment of what was to follow: the hours of study, the
talks with the monks, the strolls through cloister or garden, all
punctuated by the recurring summons to devotion. Yet for all its latent
significance it remained to him a purely sensuous impression, the vision
of a golden leisure: not a solution of life's perplexities, but at best
an honourable escape from them.

3.2.

"To know Rome is to have assisted at the councils of destiny!" This cry
of a more famous traveller must have struggled for expression in Odo's
breast as the great city, the city of cities, laid her irresistible hold
upon him. His first impression, as he drove in the clear evening light
from the Porta del Popolo to