And Next After This, The Tongue Is The
Great Divider.
I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule;
but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order appeals to me
as a model of wisdom.
By two in the morning the clapper goes upon the
bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till
eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among
different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries
from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, all
day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from
two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive
the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with
manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several
thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their
lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell,
dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and
healthful activity of body! We speak of hardships, but the true hardship
is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and
foolish manner.
From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's
existence. A long novitiate and every proof of constancy of mind and
strength of body is required before admission to the order; but I could
not find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, which
figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the
portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was
one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and
drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of
Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before
deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to
finish his novitiate.
This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the
Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as
he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when
the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried
him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual
chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated
belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has
gone to God.
At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the
gallery to hear compline and Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians
bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances
which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public
offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the
surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed
chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded
and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the
sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant
beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over
and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised
that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and
stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night.
But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton's
memoirs - a dull work - the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines
(for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods)
disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it
seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon
the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in
life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted
labours of their day. The dead in life - there was a chill reflection.
And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the
best of our mixed existence:
'Que t'as de belles filles,
Girofle!
Girofla!
Que t'as de belles filles,
L'Amour let comptera!'
And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to
love.
THE BOARDERS
But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows. At
this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I was not alone in
the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with
a small dining-room on the ground-floor and a whole corridor of cells
similar to mine upstairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a
regular retraitant; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a
day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like myself
might give what they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing was
demanded. I may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael
refused twenty francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which led
me to offer him so much; but even then, from a curious point of honour,
he would not accept it with his own hand. 'I have no right to refuse for
the monastery,' he explained, 'but I should prefer if you would give it
to one of the brothers.'
I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I found two
other guests. One was a country parish priest, who had walked over that
morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of
solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour
and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he complained much of how he
had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy
portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted cassock,
through the bleak hills of Gevaudan.
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