Chapter IX

IN the country, when a boy is sickly and unable to bear the strain of working on the land or in the vineyards, his mother says, "The little chap is delicate; we will make a priest of him." That is how Abbé Barbenton became a seminarist, and after his ordination was sent as curate to various villages, and was finally appointed parish-priest of Val-des-Saints.

All the priests to whom Mgr. Triaurault had offered the post, had politely declined it, being well aware of the painful position in which a parish-priest would be placed in regard of the Abbot and his monastery.

The Abbé Barbenton, however, accepted it, being assured that, after a while he would be transferred to a better parish. Such a thing was most unlikely, for it was quite clear that if he was successful in his conflict with the Abbey, the Bishop would be glad to leave him where he was; and, if the contrary happened, he would be disinclined to promote him, and, if necessary, would not hesitate to crush him.

Vain weakling as he was, the new curé had an unbounded confidence in his eventual success. He knew that he had the support of the local gentry, on whom he had called, and that the Mayor, though a socialist and a freethinker, was willing to back him out of hatred for the Religious. Hence he had not long been appointed to Val-des-Saints, when he began by dealing a great blow.

On the very first Sunday he determined to wreck in a day the work which for several years the monks had patiently carried on; he told the peasant girls, who knew plain-song, that henceforth hymns would be sung, and he distributed hymn-books, whose cheap melodies rather pleased the singers.

Backed by his highly-placed friends, he deprived the village of that air of a medival hamlet which till then it had possessed; and on Sundays, at the services, he transformed a church, which had hitherto been unique in its way, into a church like any other where they bellow out jaunty tunes.

Then, when he had trained his "Children of Mary" to squall more or less correctly, he proceeded to ask the monks to lend him their organist to play the accompaniments, for as there was no organ in the Abbey-chapel the organist was free on Sundays.

Fortunately the Abbot was absent, for, not suspecting any trick, he would certainly have consented. So Abbé Barbenton had to deal with Dom de Fonneuve, who, having his misgivings answered evasively :-

"That all depends. If you use plain-song, yes; otherwise, no."

Annoyed at this, the curé urged that in his own church he was free to have what music he liked on Sundays.

"And I am free to keep my organist," retorted the Prior.

This was the first reason for a quarrel.

He then determined to make alterations inside the church, by erecting new altars surmounted by plaster saints procured from the Rue St. Sulpice. For this the local gentry encouraged him, prudently withdrawing, however, when they found that he expected them to open their purses; the pecuniary assistance he obtained from them was small, so he fell back upon M. Lampre, Mlle. de Garambois and Durtal. But one and all told him that they saw no need for disfiguring the Church.

His hatred for them increased, now that he saw them refusing to accept him as their confessor and repairing either to the monastery or to Dijon, rather than receive absolution at his hands.

Matters were now coming to a head: on one side was the monastery and its three friends; on the other the cure and then gentry. There remained the village; but there the situation became more involved. The peasant had at first been well-disposed towards the curé, and furious with the Abbey because, ever since Father Miné’s breakdown, it had been unable to supply them with medicines, as nobody else in the monastery was a pharmacist. But they soon became indignant when their new pastor demanded of them fees for marriages and funerals. They suddenly perceived that the Benedictines had performed the rites of marriage and of burial without ever asking a fee; while the good wives of the parish also remarked that, since Abbé Barbenton had come, and the beautiful Sunday Mass and Office had been discontinued, the number of visitors from Dijon attracted by these Services had fallen off.

And soon the Gregorian plain-song had no more lusty defenders than the inn-keepers, whose trade was suffering by its suppression.

Meanwhile a lively duel was in progress with the sacristan; but the curé found it impossible to cope with such prodigious inertia. Father Beaudequin eluded him much as quicksilver slips through one’s fingers. It was always, "Perhaps"; or, "it is worth thinking over," or "we shall see"; but it was never "Yes"; and never "No." As he could not get the monks to hand over the chalices and the chasubles which he coveted, the curé resolved to annoy them anyway by asking them to alter their hours of Service in weekdays, his excuse being that he needed the church for catechism lessons and for an occasional funeral.

"I have no right to change the Rule of St. Benedict, nor any power to change our traditions," replied Dom de Fonneuve; "so I cannot accede to your request."

The curé showed his displeasure at this refusal by ceasing to attend the weekday service when it was celebrated by the Benedictines. He had extorted from the Abbot permission to sit in the choir in a stall next to him, above that of the Sub-Prior who was thus relegated to a lower rank; henceforth he let his stall remain empty, thinking, no doubt, that this would vex the monks, though apparently it did not. He now resolved to exchange this petty skirmishing, in which, up till now, he had always got the worst, and engage in a battle royal, for which he would prepare the field beforehand.

He now saw his opportunity. Recollecting that the Christian name of Mgr. Triaurault was Cyril, he consulted the Calendar and found that the feast of this Saint fell on a Sunday. He called on the Bishop and begged him to come and lunch with him that day at the Presbytery, as the nobility of the district would be delighted to offer him their congratulations on his name-day; and afterwards to condescend to assist at Vespers.

The Bishop was ailing and not at all anxious to waste his time thus; but the curé was so pressing that finally he accepted the invitation.

Then the curé, beaming all over, went to Father de Fonneuve and proposed that he and his Religious should sing the vespers in the church on that particular Sunday in order to give more brilliance to the ceremony and show greater honour to His Lordship.

The Prior accepted and the curé smiled.

"I should like the ceremony to be a really splendid one," he said; "one that will make a great impression upon our peasants. They are so used to the Solesmes chanting that that sort of music no longer interests them; so I have thought of adding certain pieces selected from the best composers of our day. Baron des Atours, his son, and one of their servants who has a fine voice, have offered to sing them in the organ-loft..."

"No! no!" interrupted Dom de Fonneuve; "I and my brethren will take no part in such a concert. I shall never allow our Benedictine Liturgy to be tampered with. Either we sing the Office as it is, or we don’t sing it at all. That is all I have to say."

"But I don’t object to your chanting Vespers in your own way," replied the curé. "I was referring to the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which follows it." Then, with a note of contempt he added, "You must admit, Father, that your little Benedictions with their two brief chants before the Tantum ergo, and the Te decet laus or Psalm Laudate Dominum which you intone afterwards, are short and make small appeal to the people."

"Our Benediction, like our Office, is Liturgical. We do not admit into them any fantastic additions. The matter remains where it was and may be summed up in three words: all or nothing."

"Deuce!" muttered the curé, who pretended to be puzzled; "but, in a way I have promised Mgr. Triaurault that you will show your respect for him by being present. What will he say if he does not see you in Church?’

"That I don’t know. Do you accept my conditions?"

"1 am afraid I can’t. 1 should offend the Baron and his family. But think how strange His Lordship will find your attitude, if, when he arrives, you and your monks withdraw."

"His Lordship has too high a sense of justice not to understand the reason for our refusal, and I rely upon your loyalty to tell him of it."

The curé bowed. "It’s done," he said to himself as he took his leave.

Discussing the matter later with the Prior, M. Lampre observed, "It is very sly of him; the curé prevents you from accepting his offer and compels you to offend the Bishop."

"Well, what else could I have done?" replied the old monk. "Duty comes first."

The funny part of the story was, that, though the curé caught the monks in his trap, he, too, was caught in it himself. The Bishop was angry and would not forgive him for what he considered a disrespectful hoax; he soundly rated him for being so maladroit, and, when he left, was no less furious with him than with the Benedictines.

From that day forward relations ceased almost entirely between the Presbytery and the Abbey. At last, annoyed at being kept at arm’s length, the curé tried to find out some way of easing the strained situation; lie resolved to make the approaching feast of St. Benedict his opportunity.

He first thought of using Durtal as intermediary in order to obtain an invitation to dine with the monks on that day. Contriving to meet him accidentally, he blandly remarked, "Hallo, my dear Sir, so you are going to make your profession as oblate? I should so much like to be present. If the ceremony does not take place during the Office I can make it convenient for you to use my Church on that day at any hour you like."

"I am sure I am much obliged to your reverence," said Durtal quietly, "but my profession will not be made in the Abbey Church but in the chapel of the Monastery. Hence only the monks and no one else can be present, as the chapel is situated within the enclosure."

"Ah! And on that day, no doubt, you will dine at the Abbey?"

"No doubt, I shall."

"The refectory too, being situated within the enclosure," continued the curé, with a touch of irony, I wonder if, besides yourself and the inmates, other people will be invited to dinner?"

"I do not know. While the Abbot is away, the Prior has the right to invite or not to invite anyone he likes; he is the only one who could answer your question. Good morning, Sir."

And Durtal went his way.

The curé thought to himself, "There’s nothing to be got out of him; I must go and see the Prior." Which he accordingly did. There he played his part well; told the Prior how grieved he was at all the misunderstanding there had been, blaming the Bishop whose instructions he had been obliged to obey; he also urged that, if on the feast of St. Benedict he were shut out, it would lead to much talk in the village; and Dom de Fonneuve was touched, embraced him, and gave him a cordial invitation to dinner.

The curé then enquired if the Abbot would be present that day.

"It is not likely," replied Dom de Fonneuve. "He is in Italy, at Monte Cassino, where, as you know, one of his brothers is a monk. From there he is going to Rome to see the Abbot Primate and so he will not be here for another fortnight."

The curé, who feared that the monks might put a spoke in his wheel by informing the Abbot of all his trickery, felt relieved, for he had decided to make peace all round before the Abbot’s return.

Meanwhile Durtal was making a few days’ retreat to prepare himself for his profession; part of the time he spent with Dom Felletin, the Master of Novices, and part of the time with Dom d’Auberoche, the Master of Ceremonies.

The former examined him in the Rule of St. Benedict, and the latter, who wanted the ceremony to be an unqualified success, compelled him to learn the salutations and the various movements. It was his wish that Durtal should sing three times, each time one tone higher, the ,i>Suscipe me, Domine, accompanied by the Gloria Patri which is then repeated by the whole choir. This verse of Psalm 118, appointed to be sung by monks at their profession by St. Benedict himself, in Chapter 58 of his Rule, was admirable in its simple dress of plain-song. Timid and pleading until it reached the mediant, it gained in confidence as it advanced; and each time of singing it became firmer, encouraged by the resolute accent of the monks who took up the strain as if to assure their new brother that his prayer would be heard, and that he would not be disappointed of his hope.

But the prospect of having to sing each time one tone higher, in the silence of the chapel and without the support of an organ, proved too much for Durtal’s nerves; so he obtained Father d’Auberoche’s consent to chant it in a monotone, the Fathers and the novices doing the same.

Then there were perpetual rehearsals, deep howings and medium bowings, genufiections on the top step, others on the lowest step; besides the various ways of handling and of bearing at the breast the charter of profession.

At last Durtal managed to satisfy Dom d’Auberoche. As for Dom Felletin, he cared little for gesture or ceremonial. He explained to his pupil the meaning of the oblate’s profession, glad to meet a novice as well versed in the subject as himself.

"First of all," he would say, "we must resign ourselves to the conviction that the oblatehood of St. Benedict will never become widely popular; it will never appeal save to a chosen few; indeed, it requires so much of candidates that is difficult to fulfil. The sole reason for its existence is the Liturgy; the life of a monk is the praise of God; the life of an oblate will also be the praise of God, reduced, however, to as much as he can give; to be a true oblate it is not enough to perform one’s duties faithfully and communicate more or less frequently; one must also have a taste for the Liturgy, a love of ritual and of the symbolical; an admiration for religious art and for beautiful Services.

"Oblates who can comply with these conditions — pray God there be many of them, but I doubt it — will spend this part of the monastic life as far as possible in the church; in other words they must reside in the monastery or in its neighbourhood.

"I cannot imagine oblates scattered in towns like Paris, Lyons or Marseilles, out of daily touch with the monastery to which they belong, and, consequently not attending the conventual Mass or sung Vespers every day, but meeting only once or twice a month at the Abbey, as if summoned by a bugle call. Such an oblatehood would be but a small confraternity, and of confraternities there are enough and to spare already without our adding to their number.

"On the other hand, it would also be a big mistake to compare the oblatehood to a Third Order, for into a Third Order all folk, even the most unlearned, have a right to enter, provided they be zealous Christians and practising Catholics. We, on the contrary, aim at quality, not at quantity; we want scholars, men of letters and artists persons who are not exclusively devotees."

"You don’t want goody-goodies or pious frequenters of sacristies?" cried Durtal.

"No," said Father Felletin, smiling, "we do not wish to compete with the Third Orders of other institutions; they have their use and are of service to the masses. There is no need, for instance, for us to follow in the footsteps of the Franciscans, who enjoy a power derived from an age-old foundation; indeed, in the matter of the securing of new members and in organisation we should be far inferior to them.

"Besides, let us be brave enough to admit it, if we did this we should be deceiving those of our novices who would find it more to their advantage to become affiliated to the Third Order of St. Francis, which is well-established and secures for its tertiaries benefits which we should be quite incapable of offering them. Our whole strength is in the efficacy of the Iiturgical prayer and office; and how can these be of profit to people who take not part whatever in them, and who are not in the least imbued with that Benedictine spirit, without which no one can feel at home in our Order?

"No, the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the only oblatehood that is likely to live is the mediaeval one, that of the oblate who lives in, or near, a monastery, and who regularly attends the services there, and whose heart is more with the Community than with the world.

"If we look at it thus, the oblatehood may be of great service, above all to those of an artistic cast of mind; they can enjoy the graces of the monastic life and also rely on the help of our Patriarch, St. Benedict, whilst all the while retaining a certain freedom; in this connection I must confess that, in my opinion, it is far better that the artist should not live within the precincts of the Abbey, but rather at its doors. For, even though the Rules be relaxed in their favour, dwellers in the monastery find the restraint rather tiresome, especially if the superiors of the house have views of their own, and their restraint tends to stifle personality and to kill all individual sense of art. The failure of the Abbey of Beuron is a case in point. They wanted to cast in the same mould all the painters who lived there, but all they did was to kill individual talent, so that their works are now all alike, and seem to have been produced in a laboratory from the same formula.

"Hence, to sum up: oblates should receive from the monastery spiritual direction, and the helps incidental to monastic life, but as regards all the rest they should be left entirely free.

"By way of illustration I can give you an instance of a long-forgotten attempt made at Solesmes in Dom Couturier’s time.

"This Abbot had set his heart upon reviving the art of illumination whichin the past had been the glory of the Benedictine Abbeys. It so happened, that, at that time, he had living in the Abbey, as oblates, M. Cartier and M. Anatole Foucher, the latter being the sole surviving artist with sufficient knowledge of the Liturgy and talent enough to carry on this exquisite branch of mediaeval art. He had already trained with conspicuous success several of the Benedictine nuns in the Abbey of St. Cécile, and he had just begun to teach the craft to certain of the monks who had an aptitude for this sort of work, when there came the decrees of 1880 and the community was dispersed. M. Foucher left Solesmes and, of course, the plan fell through.

"What is the actual number of oblates who live as inmates in the monasteries of the French Congregation? I do not know exactly, my information not being up-to-date, but when I last heard, there was one, who was a priest and wore the habit at Solesmes and who afterwards went to the Priory at Farnborough in Hampshire; there were two at Ligugé, one in the habit and the other in lay clothes, but both of them left for St. Wandrille, where the first became a monk; there was another in Paris at the Priory of the Rue de la Source; and then — well, those are all, so far as I know.

"Of those who live near Abbeys in their adjoining villages, I know a woman oblate, at Liguge; at St. Wandrille I understand there is quite a little colony of oblates, but whether they are really fully professed oblates I am not able to say; at Solesmes there are relatives of the monks who regularly attend the services, but I much doubt whether they are duly constituted oblates; as for those so-called oblates who live where they like and take no share in the liturgical life, there are plenty in Paris, but, as I said before, that kind of oblatehood has nothing to do with the mediaeval oblatehood, which is the only one properly so called.

"So you see the number of oblates is very uncertain and limited; from the eighth century until our own days the thread has never snapped, yet the thread is a very slender one.

"But, at any rate, to-morrow you will become the first modern oblate of Val-des-Saints; you will share more intimately in the treasure of graces and in the prayers that for long ages have been offered in this old Priory; you will have the same right as we have to benefit by the privileges granted us by Pope Gregory XVI., who made the Congregation of Solismes heir to all the favours and prerogatives that had at any time been granted by his predecessors to the Congregations of Cluny, St. Vanne, St. Hydulphe and St. Maur. This patrimony you will help to guard, and you yourself will add thereto by helping us in our liturgical efforts; and when the time of rest draws nigh, you will don the monk’s habit, in which also you will he buried, and the Patriarch, faithful to his promise, will intercede for you before your Judge.

"Though you will not be taking any vow, you will solemnly promise before the altar during Mass and before receiving the Body of our Lord, to reform your life and to lead a holy life in God. In short, you will renounce all that makes the fleshly man find joy in living; henceforth your existence will have to be one apart from the world. May your new life be one of sweet contentment; above all, by the sacrifices which it entails may it be acceptable to the Almighty above!"

"So it is quite settled, is it not? The ceremony will take place during the six o’clock Mass, at the Offertory; you will then bind you and the schedule recording your profession will be preserved in the archives of the Abbey."

"That is quite understood; I hope you will pray for me."

"You may rely on that, my dear son; and I assure you I shall not be alone in my prayers, All the young novices will assist at the Mass, and they will not forget to pray for you."

"Well, the die is cast," thought Durtal, as he left the Father’s cell. "But I really don’t feel that it is so wonderfully meritorious of me to repudiate what they call earthly blandishments; for many years past I have, of my own accord, rejected all that appeals to the taste of others, but, until now, I was not compelled to do this; I did so because I chose to. But, given the folly of human nature, is there not now a chance that, just because I have put my name to a promise, I shall find it hard to keep it?

"Well, all the better! The merit I do not now possess I shall acquire when the time comes of temptation and regret."

"All the same," he went on as he lit a cigarette, "it must be allowed that I am but a poor heir to the oblates of the early centuries. The pseudo-hermit of Mont Cindre who claims to be the successor of the recluses of Lyons, and I, who lay claim to the succession of the older oblates of Val-des-Saints, are about on a par, and a pretty pair we make. It seems to me that we are no more like real monks than the little boys dressed up in uniform and blowing their trumpets in the streets are like real soldiers."

On reaching home, he found Madame Bavoil in a state of great indignation.

"I can’t understand," she grumbled, "why women shouldn’t be admitted to see the ceremony of your profession. I am a Tertiary of St. Francis, and the Franciscans don’t make such mysteries about nothing."

"Yes, my good Madame Bavoil, but the Franciscans are not enclosed."

"I know nothing about that; all I know is that, to-morrow, I and what is worse, your sister-oblate, Mlle. de Garambois, are to have the door slammed in our faces and are to be forbidden to pray at your side."

"You will pray at a distance, Madame Bavoil. For the matter of that, if you want to get an idea of the supreme beauty of the ceremony of profession, it’s not an oblate’s profession that you ought to see; the oblate’s profession is only an abbreviation, a sort of homceopathic dose, of the monk’s profession, and splendid though the monk’s profession is, it has not a tithe of the beauty of the profession of Benedictine Nuns; that is the ceremony you ought to see.

"Oh, what an event is the profession of a Benedictine Nun! There, Liturgy and Art reach their zenith. There are moments during this extraordinary ceremony when the soul is thrilled as by some light divine and transported far beyond this vulgar world.

"Yes, indeed, there are moments when you long to give vent to the admiration which overpowers you. A masterpiece of ecclesiastical art is the Pontifical of Virgins. From the very first it grips you. After the Alleluia, the officiating Bishop, or Abbot, sits down on the faldstool facing the people; then the master of ceremonies, or assistant priest, intones the verse from the parable of the Virgins in St. Matthew, "Wise Virgins, bring your lamps, behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him!"

And the virgin, holding a lighted taper, takes a step forward and kneels.

"Then the prelate, as Christ’s representative, calls her thrice, to which she replies: ’Behold me here!’ and, one step at a time, she approaches nearer; it looks like some good serpent mesmerizing a bird.

"So the Service proceeds on its eloquent and grand lines. We have the Preface, fragrant with all the spices of the East when the choir of nuns breaks in with the verses from the Song of Songs: ’ Come, my beloved, the winter is past, the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land. The vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.’ Delightful, too, is the episode of the betrothal, when the novice acclaims Christ and witnesses that she is plighted to ’Him whom the angels serve and whose glory the heavens adore’; she holds up her right hand to show the ring blessed by the Prelate, and in ecstasy exclaims, ’My Lord Jesus Christ has bound me to Him by His ring, and adorns me as a bride.’ Then follow three ancient prayers, and the new bride, the new Esther, looking back on her probation which has now reached its consummation, chants her pean of joy ’Behold my desire fulfilled. I hold Him in whom I hoped. I am united in Heaven to Him whom on earth I loved so well!’ And then the Preface is resumed and the Mass continues.

"In comparison with this really Divine drama enacted between the soul and God, how utterly futile and silly seem all plays of ancient or modern times!"

"That is all very well, but, unfortunately, there is no Benedictine nunnery in the neighbourhood, so I shall never see the ceremony," said Madame Bavoil.

"That may be; but I merely told you about this, to show you that the ceremony of the profession of an oblate, compared with that of the profession of a nun, is so poor as to have but little interest. This is to console you for not being allowed to be present."

The next morning, after having learnt by heart like a schoolboy his Latin responses to the Prior’s questions, Durtal made his way to the cloister.

He felt restless and uneasy and heartily wished the whole thing over. All this elaborate posturing which Father d’Auheroche stressed so much, made him nervous. He was afraid of making a mistake and this fear prevented him from thinking of the act which he was about to accomplish and of the Communion winch was to follow. "Ah, Lord!" he murmured, "I think of everything except of Thee. How far better it would be if I could commune with Thee alone in some corner."

Under the arcades he met the novices who smiled a greeting but said never a word; the time of Great Silence which begins after Compline in the evening does not end till after Prime, that is to say about seven o’clock in the morning.

Like him, they entered the chapel and, soon afterwards, Dom Felletin and Dom d’Auberoche, wearing their choir-dress, made their appearance and went to the sacristy, where the Prior was vesting for Mass.

There were also a few monks, Dom Badole, Father Emonot and the Sacristan, who took their places in the stalls,

The chapel was extremely small, with a vaulted roof and stone floor. It was one of the most interesting remains of the old mediieval Priory and at one time must have been used as an annexe of the large kitchens it adjoined. Unfortunately it had been adorned by common statues of our Lady and the Sacred Heart which unpleasantly reminded one of the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue Madame in Paris; in this chapel Dom Fehletin and ibm d’Auberoche were not, like in the chapel of the novitiate, free to send such horrors to the lilulber-room, and the novices and the other monks bore with these pious atrocities as best they could; they were there, and it never occurred to any one to make a clean sweep of them.

The Mass was served by Brother Gèdre, a little novice with a sly look in his dark mouse-like eyes; indeed, he was nicknamed the "Mouse," for he was always scuttling about, always smiling and always pleased; if ever he escaped from his prayers, it was to become absorbed in the study of Greek; he was passionately fond of it, but as there were no good Greek scholars in the monastery, he had to pursue his studies alone; that was the one thing that troubled a life wholly given to the joyful service of God in the hope of one day becoming a monk.

Hitherto, poor fellow, he had known so little of comfort that the monastery seemed to him a dream of luxury and delight. An orphan, he had been brought up at a charitable institution kept by religious, where his food had been of the poorest. He had always slept in a dormitory, never knowing what it was to have a moment’s freedom from restraint or a penny to buy even a sacred picture. After his course of study was ended he went at once to Val-des-Saints.

Here he felt at home, for he had a cell of his own; life in common did not trouble him as it does laymen who have renounced the world, for he had no idea of any other mode of life. The food of the monastery he thought so good that he often deprived himself of certain dishes for fear of becoming a glutton; and the freedom which the novices had seemed to him all too great when he compared it to that of his school-days.

And yet there were times when he was distressed. One day he said to Durtal who asked him why he looked sad: "Oh, you don’t know what one has to bear in a monastery!"

Durtal, much puzzled, sought to comfort him, and soon found the reason of the boy’s dejection. That morning, at the Mass, instead of acting as Master of Ceremonies, he had been made to serve as acolyte; and this he thought derogation.

It was a childish grievance; the sadness of a child whose stick of barley-sugar has been taken from him and given to another to suck; it would have been quite laughable if one did not remember that some people suffer as much for a trivial matter as others for things of far greater moment.

But, that morning, the lad was in a happy mood and smiled affectionately at Durtal, when he came out of the sacristy, walking in front of Dom de Fonneuve on his way to the altar to serve the Mass.

Durtal sought to enter into the Mass, but his thoughts wandered; he was obsessed by the fear that he would go astray in his responses. "How I do wish this ceremony were over!" he said to himself.

When the Offertory was reached, Dom Felletin and Dom d’Auberoche ascended the altar steps and stood on each side of the Prior. Durtal left his place and knelt down before them on the lowest step. Then the Prior, crossing himself, repeated the "Domine, labia mea aperies," the "Deus in adjutorium," the Gloria," and then began to recite Psalm sixty-four, "Deus miscreatur nostri," the verses of which were chanted by the monks and novices alternately.

Then, addressing Durtal, he asked, "Quid petis?" "What dost thou ask?"

"The mercy of God, and your brotherhood as an oblate of our most holy Father Benedict."

Recited slowly in Latin came the little admonition:

"My son, you know the law under which you wish to serve; for not only have you studied it, but for a whole year you have submitted to it and practised it. You are also not unaware of the conditions of your agreement to join our brotherhood. If therefore you are resolved to observe the wholesome precepts of our most holy Father Benedict, draw near; if not, you are free to depart."

Then, after a moment’s silence, seeing that Durtal did not budge, he continued:

"Will you renounce the pomps and vanities of the world?"

"Volo."

"Will you promise your reformation according to the spirit of the Rule of our holy Father Benedict, and keep the statutes of the oblates?" "Volo." "Will you persevere in this until death?"

"Volo, gratia Dei adjuvante."

Deo gratias. May God be your help. Since in His help you trust, you are free to make your profession of Oblate."

Durtal rose and, standing in front of the altar, he read aloud the Charter of his profession, which was engrossed on parchment, and began with the Benedictine Pax and the formula.

"In nomine Domini nostri Jesus Christi, Amen."

In a faltering voice he read out the Latin text witnessing his self-consecration, made of his own free will to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever a Virgin, and to the holy Father Benedict, in the monastery of Val-des-Saints, promising reformation of life according to the Rule of the Patriarch and pledgiig himself to this in the Presence of God and of all the Saints.

When this Declaration had been read, the Master of Ceremonies led him to the top step of the altar; there, on the Gospel side, he laid his charter on the altar and signed it, first with a cross, then with his name and surname, and, finally, with his new monastic name of Brother John.

Then, descending the altar steps and holding the parchment unrolled on his breast, he presented it to the monks in the stalls, who looked at the signature and bowed.

When he had thus made the round of the chapel, Dom d’Auberoche took from him the scroll, and, enclosing it in a corporale, placed it on the altar.

Durtal then knelt down again on the floor of the sanctuary and, with his arms crossed, and with head deeply bowed, he intoned three times, each time at a higher pitch, the "Suscipe" which the monks chanted after him.

The Prior now turned towards the altar and, after the Kyrie and Pater, recited the versicles to which those present responded. This was followed by a prayer imploring the Almighty, through the intercession of St. Benedict, to keep His servant faithful to the promises which he had just made; and when Durtal had murmured "Amen," he went on,

"We, Prior of the Abbey of Val-des-Saints, acting in virtue of the powers granted to us by the Right Reverend Abbot de St. Pierre of Solesmes of the French Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, by the merits of this same Patriarch Benedict, of his sister the Virgin St. Scholastica, of saints Placid, martyr, and Maurus, Abbot of the seraphic virgin Gertrude, of St. Henry, confessor, and of St. Frances, widow, and the other saints, men and women, of our Order, receive you into our society and brotherhood, giving you a share in all the good works which, with the help of the Holy Ghost, are wrought in the French Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict."

"May God receive you into the number of His elect, may He grant you perseverance until the end, may He protect you against the snares of the enemy and bring you to His eternal Kingdom, He Who liveth and reigneth for ever and ever."

"Amen," sighed Durtal, and he bent his head yet lower, as the Prior sprinkled holy water over him, making the sign of the Cross, and accompanying his action with the words:

"Pax et benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti descendant super te et maneant semper."

Whereupon the Mass was resumed.

Durtal went back to his place. When the time for Communion came, he was really touched to see that all the novices who were not priests went with him to the Altar. Instead of communicating as usual at the earlier Mass, they had all waited for that celebration.

When the ceremony was over and Durtal had made his thanksgiving, he escaped from the chapel. He found it stifling, and he was longing to be for a moment alone with God. Crossing the cloister, he entered the church, where he sat down in a corner to collect his thoughts.

The church was still dark, and it was draughty. His mind was a blank; his thoughts seemed buried. With an effort he strove to collect them, and immediately they surged upward together; out of this chaos he sought to choose those that were worth retaining; but one thought pushed its way forward and dominated all others, sending into the darkness of the memory God, the oblatehood and every other idea; and this thought, this alloverpowering thought was...that he had forgotten to tell Madame Bavoil that he was going to lunch at the monastery at noon.

So foolishly insistent was this thought that, angry with himself, he went home muttering, "When I have had a sip of black coffee and a crust of bread, perhaps I shall be able to pull myself together."

Once home he had to describe in full to Madame Bavoil the scene in the chapel.

"Well, I am glad you did not make any mistake," she remarked; "It stands to reason you will not be home till evening; after High Mass, which will take a long time, you will no doubt go straight to the Refectory."

"Just so."

So Durtal attended High Mass. The Smyrna carpet, the relics and their lights were there, but the absence of the Abbot — whose stall was, however, draped with red velvet — deprived the ceremony of its Pontifical splendour.

Before Mass there was a procession round the cloister. Preceded by thurifer, the cross-bearer and two acolytes, the lay-brothers in their brown cowls walked first, followed by the postulants and the novices, and then by the monks and the cantors, the Prior bringing up the rear, but followed at a distance by M. Lampre and Durtal.

They advanced slowly, two by two in a haze of incense, and, having completed the journey through all four galleries of the quadrangle they re-entered the Church and Mass began.

So far as the text went, this Mass of St. Benedict was a beautiful one; it had retained the Gradual and the Tract, the Gospel and Communion of the lovely Mass of the Common of Abbots, but it began with the all-too-florid Gaudeamus; it had an epistle of its own very appropriate to the occasion, but the sequence was less happy; in its brief strophes it indeed aptly recalled these characters in Holy Writ with whom the Saint might be compared, but it lacked simplicity and its too polished Latinity did not ring true.

As for the plain-song, it was that used on great occasions; in other words, it was pretentious and second rate. The Kyrie with its finicking corkscrew ornamentation, the showy up-and-down Gloria, the Credo like a dance tune, they were all there.

"I am more firmly convinced than ever," groaned Durtal, "that the restorers of Gregorian music were on the wrong track when they distributed the Masses. They imagined that the more the pieces were dressed up, the longer their trains of neumes, the more suitable they were to enhance the splendour of great feast-days; as for me, I think it is just the other way, for, the simpler and more childlike the plain-song, the more eloquent it is and the better able to express in its own unique language of art the joy or the sorrow which are the two subjects around which are built all the church services in the Proper of the Season."

However that may be, this Mass, like that of St. Joseph which had preceded it in the Calendar, was welcome as a change after the Lenten ones which had been the rule the whole previous week. Each day the Ordo bore the direction de Feria; these Ferial, Proper Masses were different each day, very fine, but brief; no Gloria, no Credo, no Ite, missa est, no organ. The Tract substituted for the Alleluia, the Te Deum omitted at Matins; just two lighted candles on the altar; on days when there was deacon and sub-deacon, the deacon wore his violet stole tied like a cross-belt and the sub-deacon a chasuble tucked up like an apron, and Mass was preceded by the three short Hours recited without interval.

These varied Masses broke the monotony of the Masses taken from the Common; they also had a very ancient Kyrie, short, crisp, skipping with a touch of the frankness of a spoilt child, with a simple gaiety that never failed to please.

The hour of Vespers had been altered; they were sung before the midday meal, to avoid the long fast. Those rarely-heard ferial vespers were a surprise. The Dixit Dominus disappeared with the other hackneyed Sunday psalms. Each day the Psalms were different, nor were the Anthems doubled, while, on Mondays, you might listen to the magnificent In exitu Israel, so seldom heard in the Benedictine Liturgy.

But on St. Benedict’s day the Vespers included the usual workaday Psalms; they were, however, saved from dullness by the splendid Anthems; all the Anthems of the feast were fine, especially the Gloriosus Confessor Domini; in fact the Office would have been perfect, had it not been for such a second-rate hymn as the Laudibus cives resonent canoris, with its pagan taint, its Renaissance Latinity and its Olympian heaven; a hymn reeking of the schooldesk and the usher.

But, with the exception of the hymns of this feast, the period of the blessed forty-days was from a liturgical point of view admirable in its pathos. Sadness grew each day deeper, till it burst into the Tears and Lamentations and Reproaches of the Holy Week. This term of mourning and of expiation had itself been preceded by the melancholy weeks of Septuagesima — which once upon a time had been weeks of abstinence — and of the beginning of which the joyous Alleluia ceases to be heard, dies and is buried.

And Durtal smiled as he recollected how once they used to have funeral-service for the Alleluia just as if it had been soon great personage, so living did this joyous cry seem, and so closely related to Christ our Lord with whom it rose to life again on Easter morning.

In the twelfth century there existed a burial-service to be read on the Saturday before Septuagesima. On that afternoon, at the conclusion of Nones, the choristers walked in procession from the sacristy, carrying cross, torches, holy water and incense, with a handful of earth to represent the corpse. Crossing the choir of the church they went into the Cloister where the spot chosen for the interment was sprinkled with holy water, and incensed in the usual way.

It was the death of a word, the passing of a song, the eclipse of the gay and lavish neumes, and the mourning for their loss. The Gregorian Alleluias were, most of them, so exquisitely perfect that people were saddened by their momentary suppression and rejoiced when Christ’s Resurrection brought them back to life.

"This sad period of Septuagesima, which is the time of probation for Lent, as Lent itself is the novitiate for Passion tide and Holy Week will grow sadder and sadder till it suddenly ends at Easter," murmured Durtal, "and, to tell the truth, I shan’t be sorry, for this everlasting fasting and abstinence bores me; really, our good St. Benedict might at least let us eat meat on his name-day; Deuce take the austere cod-fish upon which I suppose we shall have as usual to satisfy our hunger," and he fell into line behind the monks, as they filed out from Vespers leaving the church by way of the door leading to the cloister. There he perceived many priests from the neighbourhood and a few Dominicans who had been invited by the Prior, and who were whiling away the time by walking up and down. Mutual greetings followed, and Durtal was about to slip away into the garden to smoke a cigarette, when he was pounced upon by the curé. They walked along one of the paths together and, while waiting for dinner, the curé strove to entertain Durtal with the gossip of the village. "I expect you know the girl Minot?" Durtal shook his head. "But at any rate you must know her sister who married Nimoret?" And Durtal again shook his head.

"Why, you don’t seem to know anybody here!" exclaimed the curé, in a tone of surprise mingled with suspicion.

"No, besides my former housekeeper, Madame Vergognat and old Champeaux who comes to weed my garden, I don’t see anybody. I just go backwards and forwards between my house and the Cloister. I stroll about my garden and sometimes I go to Dijon or call on M. Lampre or Mlle. de Garambois, but I have nothing whatever to do with the villagers, who are grasping and immoral, like country-folk everywhere."

The Angelus-bell put an end to their talk and they made their way to the Refectory. Here, as each guest entered, the Prior, who stood in the doorway, washed his hands and then, to the sound of a monotonous voice reading a monotonous book, the meal began.

The cod dreaded by Durtal did not appear; its place was taken by an eel, with grated bread-crumbs, swimming in a watery shallot sauce which tasted of copper; there were also poached eggs on sugared spinach, fried potatoes caramel cream, gruyère, and walnuts, and, as a crowning luxury, a taste of some excellent wine from a Spanish monastery. After grace had been said in church and coffee drunk, Durtal who was not interested in the visitors’ conversation on politics, the vintage, or the Bishop’s stillimpending resignation — escaped with Father Felletin and went to join the novices.

When they arrived a great debate was in progress. The younger ones, who were not priests, were deploring the fact that the Abbey had not monks enough to maintain a continuous service of praise — the Laus perennis — from morning till evening and from evening till morning.

"Well, some day we shall succeed," said Brothers Gèdre and Blanche, "and on that day we shall prove that the Benedictine Order is the greatest Order in the Church."

Durtal could not help smiling at their childish enthusiasm. But the elder novices, who were priests, said never a word.

In the novitiates these novices were called cures, and were known to be not particularly enamoured of the Liturgy and the Office. The truth was that they had had enough and to spare of ceremonial since their seminary days, and, despite the contrast between the wretched services in parish-churches and those in the monastery, the latter, generally speaking, failed to make any deep appeal.

Hence, the Benedictines preffered as novices laymen fresh from the outside world, to whom the splendour of monastic ritual was entirely new, rather than priests who, naturally, were a little disposed to look down on the other novices, had already formed habits that were difficult to get rid of, and who usually lackjed enthusiasm for the Opus Dei, and for all that goes to make up the Benedictine life.

What, too often, they saw in the monastery was a peaceful retreat, a means of escaping from worldly cares, and of leading a holy life in a leisurely way; and, in exchange, they were willing to accept the tedium of long ceremonies and the fatigues of early rising.

"It is true, is it not," said Brother Blanche to Durtal, "that the whole aim of the monastic life ought to be the perpetual praise of God?"

"Certainly, Brother; but you can console yourself by the thought that such perpetual praise already exists, not, indeed, in any one particular Order, but in all the Orders taken together; prayer never ceases; congregations belonging to the various Observances relieve each other, and, collectively, they do what you are so anxious to do alone."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if you simply look at the service-tables of the various communities, you will find that it is indeed so. In the daytime, of course, there will be blanks, unless you keep up the Perpetual Adoration by always having several monks kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, for you cannot go on indefinitely repeating the Canonical Hours, and you must work, and eat. The question, therefore, regards rather the night: you have to pray to God when no one else is praying; well, that question is already satisfactorily solved, and you have your place in the concert of prayer."

"Quite true," observed Father Felletin.

"Do explain it to us," said the novices.

"Well, I can give you only a rough idea of what I mean, for I have not got the Rules of the different Orders before me. I am only speaking, you quite understand, of the contemplative Orders, and I leave aside the others, who, as soon as morning dawns, also give you the support of their supplications.

At the moment when your last Liturgical hour ceases, that is, at the end of Compline at about 8.30 p.m., Divine service recommences elsewhere. Matins and Lauds occupy the time from 8.30 to ro p.m. in the Benedictine Nunneries of the congregation of France; from 9 p.m. till ii p.m. in the convents of the Carmelites; from 11.30 p.m. till 2 am. in the Carthusian monasteries; from 2 am, till 4 am, or 4.30 am, in the Trappist monasteries and convents, in the Benedictine monasteries and convents of the Primitive Observance, and in the Benedictine convents of the Blessed Sacrament; from 4.30 am, till 5.30 am. in the Benedictine monasteries of the French Congregation from 4.30 am, till 6 a.m. in the convents of the Poor Clares and in other institutions; from six o’clock onwards, the continuance of the service of prayer is assured. You will bear in mind that my list omits the Orders whose Rules I have forgotten, or whose statutes I have not read and that the service-table I have just outlined is only an approximative one, as the length of the services varies according to the feasts."

"Yes," said Dom Felletin, "and it might be added that the Premonstratensians recite the Office from midnight till one o’clock, and resume it at 5 am, after a brief period of slumber. In fact, there is not a single hour of the night that stands idle; when the world sleeps or sins, the Church keeps watch; her nuns and her monks are always at their posts, always on guard, to protect the camp of the faithful, incessantly besieged by the enemy."

"You ought not to have forgotten the Benedictine nuns of Calvary," said Brother de Chambéon reproachfully; "they ought to have been named with the Trappists and the Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament, for they also rise at two to chant Matins; their Order follows the Rule of St. Benedict in all its rigour; they fast perpetually, and, like the Poor Clares, go barefoot from the first of May until the feast of Holyrood on the 14th of September.

Brother de Chambéon loved these Religious for the hardships of their life. This good fellow, who was so severe with himself, was yet as sweet and amiable as one to whom suffering is unknown. Though he was the oldest of the novices, in character he was the most youthful of all. His example carried more weight among the novices than the exhortations of their masters; his good nature appeased the petty quarrels that inevitably occurred between the younger novices and those who were already priests. He radiated peace wherever he went and all listened to him as to a saint.

"It would be interesting to know," continued Durtal, "if these Liturgical time-tables were agreed upon among the various Orders, or whether they were a product, not of chance — for there is no such thing — but of Providence, God so ordering it that each Congregation chose a different hour, so as to make the chain complete."

"Ah! " cried Dom Felletin, "that we cannot tell. It is difficult to believe that there was any pre-arrangement, for these various Congregations came into being at different periods. It maybe that, after having ascertained the observances of the older Orders, the founders of new Orders decided to take up the service of prayer at the hour when the others relinquished it. That is a possible theory but proof of it we have none."

Here Father Emonot came in, gently leading Father Philagone Miné, now in his second childhood.

Ever since his stroke, he spent his time sauntering round the cloisters and seemed happy only among the novices. He would sit down by their side, never saying a word, but watching their little pranks with kindly eyes. Although it was against the Rule for the monks to associate with the novices, they made an exception in his favour, and the young fellows good-naturedly walked him round their part of the garden when he was so inclined.

He was deeply respected by all. His case was, indeed, an extraordinary one. In his whole life this veteran monk had never once missed the Office, and even since losing his reason he was still punctual in his attendance, not missing even Matins, from which all the sick are exempt. The Abbot once said to him: "Father, you are old and in bad health; you need not get up till five," but he gently shook his head, and persisted in reaching his seat before the "psalm of the lie-abeds" had been said.

Nor was this a matter of habit or routine, for, being hardly able to walk, he now rose earlier in order not to be late. He calculated to a nicety the time he would need, and, in church, said his prayers with the utmost fervour. His reason, clouded as regarded earthly things, had remained intact when it was a question of offering praise to God.

It was touching to see this aged man tottering to church, holding the wall to save himself a fall. A worthy laybrother had been entrusted with his care, but he refused all help, not wishing to be a burden to anyone. But one day he fell down and cut his forehead. Then the Abbot strictly forbade him, under obedience, to leave his cell unless someone went with him; he understood, shed a few tears, and after that never left his cell save with an attendant

His pharmacy, which, when he was in his right mind, had interested him so much, was nothing to him now. One day, thinking to please him, they took him there, but he blankly stared at it, apparently unable to recollect that in that cell, littered with bottles, he had spent his whole life. His memory was completely wiped out. In the midst of that mind in ruins God alone remained; sometimes, when sitting with the novices, he would stammer out a few unintelligible words. Thinking he was asking for something, they would make him repeat, only to find that he was murmuring the names of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother.

"Sit down, Father," said Brother Blanche, offering him a seat, "sit there, next to our new Brother Durtal." The old man, as if suddenly roused, gazed at him with eyes that for a moment grew bright. An expression of pity crossed his features, and he sadly shook his head; then he smiled a joyous, gentle smile.

Durtal, whom his look puzzled, asked him, "What is it, Father?" But the vacuous stare had returned and his features could express no answer.

Chapter X

NEVER before in the monastery had there been so sad a Holy Week as this. The Communities Bill, in the reality of which no monk had believed, had just been passed by the Chamber, and resolute optimism had made room for pessimism of the gloomiest kind.

Apart from a few dreamers — who fondly hoped that the President of the Council would save them at the last moment by persuading the Senate to throw out the Bill, and that M. Loubet, being a pious man, would resign rather than lose his soul by assenting to the Bill — all the others were convinced that the senile puppets of the Luxembourg were not worth more than the mischief-making scamps of the Chamber; that there was nothing good to be looked for from any of them.

The Abbot, who had just returned from abroad, had heard most alarming rumours as to the fate of the Religious Congregations. He breathed not a word, but the sad expression of his face and the fervour of his prayers spoke volumes.

"It cannot be," thought the novices, "that all the prayers offered up to Heaven by all the various communities should be offered in vain; but we must do our best to pray yet more fervently"; and each one tried to invent new acts of self-denial, rising earlier, and doing penance, in order to avert the blow.

Already, for some weeks past, by order of the Abbot, after Terce and before the nine o’clock High Mass, all the monks, kneeling, chanted the Psalm, Levavi oculos meos in montes, the Sub Tuum, and the prayer to St. Michael; discouragement was now becoming general when so many prayers for deliverance seemed fruitless.

Durtal — who had always been persuaded that the Devil had his finger in the Dreyfus affair, and looked upon it as nothing more than a spring-board, set up by Jews and Protestants, from which to leap at the Church’s throat and strangle her — Durtal had, long ago, lost all hope; yet, when the Bill had passed, it came as a slight shock, such as that which a man feels when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a danger that he did not think quite so near.

"To think," said he to Madame Bavoil, "that a few ruffians, elected, God knows how, by trickery of some sort, are going to crucify the Bride, as once the Jews crucified the Bridegroom. It is the Church’s Passion that now begins; nothing is wanting, all is there; from the clamour and blasphemy of the rabble of the Extreme Left, to that ex-pupil of the Jesuits, that Judas yclept Trouillot, and that new Pilate who is called Loubet.

"Ah, there’s a fellow for you! On the quiet he used to go regularly to Mass at the Sorbonne, when he was a member of that disreputable rabbit-hutch, known as the Senate; after signing the Bill, he washes his hands! I should much like to know who the priest is that will dare to give him absolution when he makes his Easter confession."

"I wonder what this Monsieur Loubet says when he prays?" mused Madame Bavoil.

"Well, no doubt he asks God to keep him in office, to prosper his speculations on the Bourse, and also to protect his children and make them fearless Christians like himself."

"As he doesn’t keep ballet-dancers, he thinks himself a good man, for, probably, like most other Catholics, he imagines that the only sins that count are the sins of the flesh. No doubt he also believes himself a charitable man, for he snatched from prison the cool swindlers of the Panama swindle. Hence his conscience is clear, he is not worried by scruples, has nothing to reproach himself with, and, honoured by his own folk, he lives in peace."

"There are two M. Loubets, in fact. One admits God’s title to man as a private individual; the other considers that a politician occupies a place apart, and needs have no thought of God. But, after all, M. Loubet is a mere typewriter. You touch the keys, and out comes the word Loubet. If God is displeased, he is not to blame, but Trouillot, Monis, Millerand, or Waldeck-Rousseau, for it is they who manipulate the keys, and who write his name at the foot of the Decrees.

Then, when the day’s fell work is done, this man, who forbids the poor to give their children a religious education, returns to his home and fireside, sends for the curé of St. Philippe du Roule — who says Mass every Sunday at the Elysee — and implores him to see that his children are taught the Catechism; and, sitting in his chair, he fingers with a certain pride the fine Rosary which His Holiness gave, no doubt as a reward for her virtues, to that other excellent Catholic who is his wife."

"Why, my friend, your portrait is just the portrait of the Pharisee, whom Christ put to shame."

"I fear there is no doubt about that."

"Well, there is still some hope. Rome may yet interfere."

"What can Rome do? Nothing. No Pope has ever loved France more than does Leo XIII. When Catholics, utterly lacking in any initiative of their own, pestered him with requests for instructions as to what they should do, he, in his goodness, thought to do us a service by meddling with our affairs; and, misinformed and certainly misled concerning the state of our country, he fondly imagined that he could tame that ferocious fowl, a cross between vulture and goose, which is the Republic— the Republic of Jews and Atheists. Alas! the vulture badly pecked the hand held out to caress it. Nevertheless His Holiness did not give up hope; he fought inch by inch for the few religious liberties that still remained intact, and, in exchange, he had to wink an eye when worthless Bishops were appointed, and to submit to all sorts of threats and insults. The more fatherly he showed himself, the more insolent the enemy became. Last of all, we get this Communities Bill; the Pope made a show of resistance and declared that, if the Religious Orders were touched, he would deprive France of her protectorate of the Levant. This time he was spared blows from the vulture’s beak; this would have been all too noble a way of wounding him; the satraps who rule us resorted to a different method and simply put their thumbs to their noses. So, fearing to make things worse, he sadly kept his peace. What can he do further? He can offer no resistance now; the opportunity has been lost."

"Certainly, if anyone deserves pity," said Madame Bavoil, "it is this poor old man whose kindly intentions have been rewarded only with mockery and insult."

"And yet, I imagine," said Durtal, "that greater griefs have harassed the Holy Father’s life; this is only the last bitter drop in the cup that he has had to drain, but perhaps the most bitter.

"In our day the Papacy might have played a splendid part, and Leo XIII. was just the man to undertake the responsibility, but events of which we know nothing sapped his will, and caused him to sink back exhausted into the shade.

"While Europe, rotten to the core, banded against mercy and justice, grovelling before sheer brute force, looked on, unmoved, at the Turkish massacres of the Armenians and British robberies in the Transvaal, one man alone could have arisen, imposing, by reason of his age and majesty — the Pope — and have said to all: ’ I speak in the Name of the Lord, Whom you crucify by your cowardice; you are the worshippers of the Golden Calf; you are the Cams among people.’ Possibly that might have done no good from a political point of view, but from a moral point of view, how boundless would have been the effect of such a protest It would have shown that justice still existed here below; Rome, like a lighthouse shining in a dark world The nations in their confusion could have gazed thereon, and have felt that Christ’s Vicar upon earth was on their side, and would fight for them against their foes, crowned villains or demagogues.

"But His Holiness, who must have wept tears of blood at his enforced silence, never said a word. Alas, Poor Pope!"

"The fact is," suggested Madame Bavoil, "that cooped up in the Vatican, and stripped of the Temporal Power which by right is his, Leo XIII. has for many years led a life which is one long Calvary."

"Alas! that is so. But, now, to come back to the distress caused him by France, his favourite daughter, what will he decide to do? Today, when Freemasonry triumphs, and even his spiritual patrimony is about to be snatched from him, will he arise like the lightning and hurl his thunderbolt, doom to excommunication and malediction, Loubet, Waldeck-Rousseau, Trouillot, Monis and their children and their children’s children, and all the deputies who voted for the Bill, and all the Senators who will vote for it? Will our Sovereign Pontiff call down on them the wrath of Heaven? I doubt it. He will forgive; and, according to the Gospel-teaching, he will be right; only where will all this tolerance land us?"

"Ah!" cried Madame Bavoil, shaking her head. "Let us have done with all this sad business; let us only think of Our Lord Who is about to be crucified. Tenebrae will soon be beginning; let us go and weep with Christ in His Agony."

"If we may deem ourselves worthy to do so!" said Durtal, as he put on his hat and cloak.

No sooner was he in the church than he forgot all his previous sadness. The divine Liturgy transported him; he soared far above the mire of this world, and the panorama of this awful Week unfolded itself before his eyes.

Before, by brief stages, conducting us to the height of Golgotha and to the foot of the Cross, the Church, in the Gospel of Passion Sunday, showed us the Son of God compelled to hide Himself for fear of being stoned by the Pharisees; and to express such humiliation she covered all her statues and her crosses with violet veils. Another week passed and, for a few short moments, her distress was broken by the Mass of Palms.

On the previous day the Lesson of the Mass proclaimed the appalling maledictions hurled against the Jews by Jeremiah, and the next day, in the splendid Mass, amid cries of Hosannah and the triumphal Gloria Laus, Jesus came riding on the colt, the foal of an ass, as foretold by Zachariah, and, deafened by the acclamations of the people, He entered into that Jerusalem which, a few days later, with shouts of fury, was to hound Him to His death.

And, as soon as the glorious Procession of the Palms was over, the Church again returned to her clue, to Christ’s anguish and her own, and kept to it till Easter; the narratives of the Passion, beginning with that of St. Matthew on Palm Sunday, were continued on Tuesday by that of St. Mark, on Wednesday by that of St. Luke, and on Friday by that of St. John. As he listened to them Durtal was entranced by this strange, thrilling chant; the recital to a melody with constantly recurring themes was monotonous, poignant, yet almost caressing; and this dreamy, mournful impression was again experienced during the Lamentations of Tenebrae, sung to a few notes and with variations depending on the stops and question-marks and pauses of the text.

Some of these old melodies must have been taken from Jewish sources, being less of Graeco-Roman than of Hebrew origin, their languid lilt and cadence, simple, and yet subtle, reminding one of Oriental tunes.

In any case, they certainly date from the very earliest times, and amendments made in the seventeenth century and later have not altered their colour nor their outline. Indeed, they are wonderfully suited to services that also date from the first ages of the Church, perhaps even from the Church of Jerusalem in the fourth century.

Wonderful, indeed, were these days of mourning at Val-des-Saints. No sound of bells now heralded their coming, as the monks, in muffled feet, noiselessly entered the sanctuary like phantoms; the swish of their large black cowls, as they passed, produced a cold wind that smelt of cellars, masonry and tombs. The Psalms of the Little Hours were recited swiftly, verse after verse, like dripping tears, without the usual "Deus in adjutorium," without the "Gloria," that usually breaks the monotony, and, at the end of each Hour, the "Miserere" was recited in lugubrious accents, the last word, vitulos, being flung out on the air as a handful of earth is flung into the grave.

With its crosses covered in violet, its triangle of smoking, waxen tapers, and the lamb-like wailing of the Hebrew letters chanted at the beginning of each of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the dimly-lighted church was a sight to harrow the soul. The Abbot with the mitre and crosier, and wearing violet vestments on Maundy Thursday, washed the feet of his lay-brothers; and on Friday, after the Adoration of time Cross and the sinning of the Reproaches, intermingled with the refrain-like apostrophe of the triple Agios, wearing a black chasuble and a white mitre, without bugia or crosier, he made his way to the Altar of Repose to fetch the Consecrated Host; and all the kneeling monks held lighted candles, which they blew out the instant the Abbot had consumed the sacred species.

The monastic services in Holy Week did not differ from the Roman ones; but in no church, nor even in any cathedral, could they have been performed with equal splendour. Unfortunately, if at Val-des-Saints the ceremonial had been grand up to the morning of Holy Saturday, on that day everything was spoilt.

It had been arranged by way of compromise between the abbey and the presbytery that the monks should occupy the church on Easter Sunday, but that the curé should have the honour of blessing the Font on Holy Saturday. He therefore took the service, surrounded by all the monks; he was not a success and his French pronunciation of the Latin blended strangely with that of the monks, who used the Italian one.

To those who were long accustomed to the Italian pronunciation it was already somewhat trying to have to listen to the French pronunciation, but this was made worse by the two being combined, the celebrant using one and the choir another; it was sheer cacophony; it was as if the curé and the Benedictines were speaking different tongues and the discord was accentuated by the Gregorian plain-song which the curé chanted, not according to the Solesmes text but as they did it in his seminary, and God knows what that was like!

Everyone was anxious to get through a service winch was growing ridiculous. Happily the splendour of the Mass that followed compensated in some measure for the artistic failure of the Blessing of the Font, wonderful though this service is when well rendered in plain-song by trained monks.

After the short Epistle of St. Paul the Subdeacon, standing before the Abbot’s throne, announced to him the Resurrection of the Alleluia. And the Abbot, glad to hear the good news, chanted it thrice, and thrice the choir responded. Then, after the Credo, and during the offertory the Paschal Lamb, bedecked with ribbons and flowers, was led up to the altar rails.

The poor beast, pulled by the Father Guest-master and pushed from behind by the Brother Cook, kicked and grew restive, striving to escape, looking distrustfully at the man robed in cloth of gold, who, with his train of attendants, came forward from the depths of the choir to give it his blessing. It seemed as if it knew that such extreme interest in its poor little self boded ill.

The morning Office of that Holy Saturday looked as though meant never to end. Service began at 8 am, and had hardly ended at midday. But Durtal was happy; when, at times, the service grew wearisome, he allowed his thoughts to stray, and mused on our Saviour and His Blessed Mother. "Yes, indeed," he said to himself, as he thought of Our Lady, concerning whom at this mournful time Scripture says so little, "yes, indeed, those hours at the foot of Calvary must have been terrible for her. It was the sword-thrust predicted by the aged Simeon; yet the blow did not fall all at once. It was the suspense that was so harrowing, the period between the arrest and the condemnation of her Son.

"It lasted eleven hours. Christ had been arrested and taken to Jerusalem on the Thursday night at about eleven o’clock; He was before Annas and Caiaphas on the Friday morning till about two o’clock; was brought before Pilate at six o’clock, and before Herod at seven o’clock; mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns and condemned to death between eight and ten o’clock.

"The Blessed Virgin knew that Jesus must die. She herself had consented to His death and she would have slain him as a sacrifice with her own hand, so Antoninus tells us, if the salvation of the world had required it. Nevertheless, she was but a woman. Heroic virtue and every gift and grace of the Holy Ghost were hers; of all Virgins she was holiest, for she stood alone; still she was not a goddess, she was not divine, but remained a human being, and therefore could not but be tortured by this suspense.

"What those hours of waiting meant, who shall ever know? She, the Mother of God, daughter and spouse of the Lord, and sister of mankind of whom at the foot of the Cross she was to become the Mother, bathed in the blood of her Son, all her successive woes reached their climax then, yet most she wept for the perversity of that abominable race to which she belonged.

"Ready to suffer all that she could possibly stiffer, she must yet have hoped against hope, wondering in her overwhelming grief whether, at the last moment, these villains would not spare her Son, whether God, by some unforeseen miracle, would not achieve the redemption of the world without inflicting upon the Word Incarnate the awful torment of the Cross. She must have remembered how, after showing his readiness, Abraham was spared the fearful task of cutting his own son’s throat, and perhaps she hoped that, like Isaac, his prototype, Jesus also would be released at the last minute, and saved from the sacrifice.

"Such thoughts are natural, for Mary knew what was meet for her to know, but she did not know all; for instance, she knew the mystery of the Incarnation, but had no knowledge of the time, or the place, or the hour; and before the visit of the Angel Gabriel she was not aware that she was the woman chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Messiah.

"And, being humble, she never sought to probe the secrets of the Most High, and so was liable to cherish fond hopes even as other women.

"What happened to her during those hours concerning which the Gospels are silent? When she heard that Jesus had been apprehended, so Ludolph the Carthusian tells us, she hastened after him with Magdalene, and as soon as she had found him she stayed with him and never left him again.

"Sister Emmerich confirms this story, though her account is fuller and somewhat involved; she enters into details and states that Mary was accompanied, not only by Magdalene, but also by the whole little company of holy women.

"She shows us Mary following at a distance the soldiers who came to take Jesus and fainting when she saw His arrest; she was then removed to the house of Mary, Mother of Mark, where the Apostle John brought her news of the brutal treatment of Christ by the soldiery while on the way. The nun also tells us that it was John himself who was the young man in the linen cloth who fled away naked that he might warn our Lady.

"But she was, so the visionary tells us, a prey to such grief that she would not stay where she was, but made her way to the house of Caiaphas. Near it she met Peter, to whom she said, ’Simon, where is my Son?’ He turned away and said nothing, but when she asked again he exclaimed ’Mother, question me not! What your Son suffers may not be told in words. They have condemned Him to death, and as for me — I denied Him!’

"Heart-broken, never resting, she wanders along the way of the cross, till at last St. John, alone among the Evangelists, shows her on Calvary, at the foot of the Cross, with her heart pierced, and this time pierced to the very hilt, by the seven swords of the seven deadly sins."

As he called to mind this grievous narrative, Durtal thought again of those pitiless swords and of the torture they had brought to our Lady of the Seven Dolours, until at last every hope vanished and they were plunged home. What a field for meditation is to be found in the reconstruction of the few hours of a life so completely unknown at that of our Mother!

And Durtal mourned with her during the reading of the second lesson of the first Nocturne on Good Friday when Brother Blanche, standing in the middle of the choir, chanted the Hebrew letter Mem, with its suggestion of a sheep’s prolonged bleat, and then went on with the Prophet’s lament; "To what shall I compare thee, and to whom shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I equal thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Sion? For great as the sea is thy destruction, and who shall heal thee?"

"Heal thee, indeed! "sighed Durtal, "instead of the oil and wine that the Good Samaritan poured into the wound, it is rather with vitriol and hydrochloric acid that our modern Pharisees would treat her wounds, if they had her in their grip. For ages our Lady has chosen France for her special home; for in no other country has she dispensed so many graces, nowhere else has she manifested her power, by such a series of never-ending miracles as those of Lourdes; and, as in Palestine then, so in France now, insults are heaped on her, and abuse on her clients.

France it is that has found the way to make of the whole year one long Holy Week for our Lady.

Of such thoughts he could not rid himself: truth to tell, Holy Week was the one best suited to his aspirations and to his tastes. Our Lord on the Cross, the Madonna in tears; these were what he loved to contemplate. He felt more at home gazing at the Pieta than at the Crib. At the end of the long services of Holy Week he felt exhausted, indeed, yet happy; in that week he could really feel with the Church, and would pray with fervour.

It meant an effort to acquire a different frame of mind when Easter came, and to enter into the Paschal joy when the Alleluias resounded in the church and when clusters of novices, hanging on the bell-ropes, sent merry peals chiming from the tower. Yet, what a glorious day is the day of the Resurrection! What jubilation filled the church! It was hung with red velvet and decked out with flowers, while the reliquaries, like mirrors of glass and gold, threw back the gleam of the tapers. The pomp and ceremony of the Pontifical mass equalled that of Christmas; all the servers, with their black hoods cast back over their white surplices, and crosier-bearer, mitre-bearer, bugia-bearer, and train-bearer. The service opened out from the moment of the Introit where Christ Himself celebrates His Resurrection in the prophetic words of the Psalmist; even the suppliant Kyrie donned a festive garb then came the lightly tripping Victimae Paschali Laudes; finally the proud, triumphant Alleluia that follows the Ite, missa est, and is repeated by the choir in the response.

And, that nothing might be wanting, the anthems at Vespers were quite exquisite; and at Benediction, besides the regulation hymns, they sang the old country ditty, O Filii et Filiae, and then an early prose, the Salve Mater taken from the Variae preces which had borrowed it from an old Carmelite Breviary.

It was a day of musical ecstasy and liturgical high spirits; Durtal had not left the church and the monastery since the morning, and with the monks, M. Lampre and the curé had helped to dispose of the Paschal lamb.

The lamb had been served whole, being brought in on a tray, legs upward and mouth agape. Swathed in great aprons and armed with huge knives, the Cellarer and Father Ramondoux acted as carvers. Durtal could not help laughing.

The younger novices, who since the beginning of Lent had never eaten their fill, fell to with a will. Though the meat was as tough as that of some old ram, they devoured it like so many ogres; nor was the appetite of the old monks one bit less healthy.

"The fact is," thought Durtal, as he looked at Gèdre and Blanche, "the fact is, for forty days these poor lads have not tasted a morsel of meat, and even their bread has been rationed, only just enough being given them to prevent them from fainting; spinach and beetroot served with white sauce is not sufficient food for children that have to get up at dawn and are on their feet until night.

"I had to fast nearly as strictly as they, for, as there was no fish at Val-des-Saints on those days when eggs were forbidden, I had to live on vegetables, and the result is that I feel quite weak; my stomach is all out of order, too; I am not at all sorry to fall upon this mutton, tough though it be. I shall be still more pleased to resume my old habits and to go to Vespers at four o’clock instead of at half-past eleven, which left me with an awkward interval after Mass had finished at ten o’clock. There was nothing to do but to go home or else stroll about the village; but, thank goodness, from to-day things will be normal again!"

After dinner, when he had got back from the chapel and had joined the Abbot, Dom de Fonneuve, Dom Felletin, Dom Badole, the curé and M. Lampre, for coffee in the guest-room, Durtal felt remarkably happy, though why, he was not quite sure, and, indeed, the reasons were many; there was the stimulus of being among men upon whose minds the joyful liturgy had been working ever since dawn; there was the sense of satisfaction of a man freed from irksome tasks and lean meals; lastly there was the kindly influence of the milder weather, for the frost had gone and spring had come.

The air seemed almost soft, and Durtal before Mass had taken a walk in his garden. The little woodland walk was carpeted with violets; and the brown, sticky buds of the chestnut-trees were ready to burst, though the boughs seemed inky-black; the fruit-trees were in blossom; cherry-trees and the peach-trees were sprinkled with snow-white and pink; after the cheerless winter and the big doses of prayer in the previous week, what a relief it was to reach Spring, and Easter!

All seemed to feel this happy deliverance, even the curé who, with legs crossed, sat in front of the fire-place where logs still smouldered.

But suddenly, all their gaiety vanished. The guests had just been passing the usual compliments on the beauty of the service and the chant, when the Abbot, addressing M. Lampre and Durtal, sadly quoted the words from St. Luke, "With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer," and, when all pricked up their ears, he added, "I wonder where we shall be next year at this time? and with whom we shall eat the Paschal lamb?"

"But," said Durtal, "have you quite decided to leave us?"

"Decided? I can decide nothing yet. We must first wait until the Bill is voted by the Senate: that may be a matter of months; then, before coming to any decision we must know the Pope’s instructions."

"And, suppose he doesn’t send you any," said M. Lampre, "or only vague and indefinite ones, leaving each one the task of getting out of the muddle as best he can? Between ourselves, he really can’t trace out for you any clear line of action, for the interests of the Congregations are not the same, and what would be helpful to one would be harmful to the other."

"In that case, all the Abbots of the Order would meet at our mother-house at Solesmes and there settle what course to pursue."

"The course is marked out already," said Father de Fonneuve, "for we cannot submit to a Law which openly infringes the Law of the Church and the very principle of the Religious life. To bow to such a sacrilegious law would be, on our part, a great breach of trust.

"Orders like ours, where the members take solemn vows, have the right of being exempt from the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, and this edict decrees the opposite and simply subjects us to the Bishops. Now this right of exemption was given us by the Ecumenical Council of Trent and by Apostolic Constitutions, which simply confirmed the Decrees of the Council; hence neither Government nor Bishop can raise a finger against us. Is it not their business to approve or to disapprove of the statutes of religious orders, when once they have been approved by the Sovereign Pontiff? The projected law is therefore an intolerable encroachment by the civil authority on the prerogatives of the Holy See; it is also a denial of the monastic life, since these godless folk refuse to recognize the solemn vows on which this life is based."

"Just think of what it means," cried Dom Felletin, Fancy Mgr. Triaurault substituting himself for St. Benedict if we consented to hand over our Rule to him; he might strike out whatever did not please him and put in other things at his own sweet will."

"Not to say," added M. Lampre, "that other Bishops in other dioceses where there are Benedictine monasteries might do exactly the contrary. He might cancel all that his colleague had approved, and vice versa. What an utter muddle that would be!"

"Besides," said Dom de Fonneuve, "it would be simply asinine on our part to comply with the requirements of this law and furnish, with our request for authorization a statement of our receipts and expenses, and an inventory of all the goods and chattels we possess; for this would be like handing over our purse to these sharpers, who just now are only thinking of the best method of stealing it. After all, what guarantee does such authorization afford us, even supposing it were granted, as it requires only an order in Council to annul it? We are also called upon to furnish a list of the members of the Community, giving their family name as well as their name in Religion, their nationality, their birth-place, their age and the date of their entry. This is merely imposing on the monks that police-supervision which has been abolished for evil-doers; all that is now wanted is that their finger-prints should be taken."

"That was certainly an act of forgetfulness on the part of Trouillot," said Durtal. "Let us, hope that the Senate may yet repair it."

"Then again," remarked the Guest-master, "the new ruling about Orders in Council, as stated in Article 20, may give the Jews a handle to make the law even worse than it looks on paper."

"Yes, that you may well expect," said M. Lampre.

"We must build on no false hopes," said the Abbot; "the Congregation of Solesmes will never consent to bear this yoke. So, supposing the Senate passes the Bill after the recess — and it certainly will — then we shall have just six months to look about us and find a home; consequently, by next December at the latest we shall no longer be here."

"Where do you think of going?" asked Durtal.

"I don’t know; Belgium is the nearest country and living there is rather cheap; it is also the last Catholic country where freemasonry is still held in check. If the Assembly of Abbots decide, as they certainly will, that we must go into exile, directly I get back from Solesmes I shall start house-hunting."

"Yes, but it still will remain to be seen whether the ministers will put the law into force," said the curé.

"There is not the least doubt about that," exclaimed Durtal. "Do you suppose that these miscreants, after having achieved their desires at the cost of long years of skilled plotting, would now let their opportunity slip? Really you must think them bigger asses than they are. Don’t you fear; they will carry through their wicked scheme to the end, and not stop at the monks but attack the secular clergy, too."

The curé shrugged his shoulders. In his heart of hearts he thought the monasteries useless and mere cumberers of the ground; but he was convinced that secular priests were indispensable and that them the Republic would never dare to touch.

"Quite so, and after the clergy, it will be the turn of the wealthy class," said M. Lampre. "After the theft of your mortmain property, we shall see the wholesale plundering of our up-to-date securities. I wonder, shall we be roused from our apathy when our cash-boxes are forced open?"

"No," replied Durtal, "we shall submit with a sigh and that will be all. As for the Catholics, you know as well as I do, what utter fools and cowards they are. If by any chance one of them were bold and resolute enough to resist, the deputies and senators of the party would at once crush him."

"So there’s nothing to be done?" exclaimed Dom de Fonneuve.

"No, Father, nothing. 1 am not a prophet, but 1 am ready to bet that, when the evil day comes, Catholic spokesmen will just talk; they will doubtless get up petitions, which the Government will fling into the waste-paper basket; they will make pathetic speeches at meetings where stewards will be handy to see that no harm comes to their precious bodies; but, depend on it, when the moment is reached when they should come out into the street and show themselves, these godly knights will only issue warlike manifestos, whilst the Bishops will lament having thus done their duty so valiantly in decorous diction, but, one and all, they will submit and grovel on the ground."

"If that is so, then we may well despair of France."

"I see no reason for not despairing," retorted Durtal.

"No! No! " cried the others in chorus, "You are really too much of a pessimist. We are going through a crisis; the Orders will have to go into exile, about that there is no doubt. It may even be 1793 over again; but then will come the reaction; France will come to her senses, and the monasteries will flourish once more."

"Like you, I hope there may be a reaction," replied Durtal; "but I fear I cannot but croak like the bird of ill-omen; even were the Conservatives to sweep the country, I cannot imagine the monks reinstated in their monasteries. I think the Communities Bill will fare like the Concordat, which their Most Christian Majesties, our old Kings, having once got, were so cager to keep. It is a weapon which no Government would care to part with.

"The best thing that could happen, from your point of view, is that the new Law should he executed in so outrageously unfair a way as to exite sympathy; in that case, possibly, some of its worst clauses might be modified hereafter; that is what I hope. If, on the other hand, it is put into force blandly and calmly, if the Orders are strangled politely with a sillken cord, then it will retain its place in the Code and be as intangible as the corpse after it has been laid in the grave. It’s a sad thing to say, but what is wanted to fight the Bill is pluck, and pluck is one of the two things Catholics are loath to produce; the other thingbeing money."

"Alas!" exclaimed Father de Fonneuve, "this time I am afraid you are right."

The bell rang. The recreation time was over, and they all separated.

"It’s all very fine," said Madame Bavoil to Durtal, when he repeated this conversation to her, "but, if the Benedictines go, what becomes of us?"

And when Durtal did not answer, she added, "Perhaps we ought to pray to one of your favourite saints, for instance, to St. Christina, whom people call upon when in trouble."

"And to St. Benedict, too, for I shall be in the strange position of being an oblate in a house of his which is to be demolished; I am indeed an oblate in extremis. I shall have to bury myself and then wear mourning for myself. But I think that, perhaps, our good Patriarch will bring me to life again in some place remote from the busy world; where, I don’t know. I hope so, but, in the meantime, we have much to face."

Chapter XI

SOME months had elapsed and, as had been foreseen, the Senate had proved itself the shameful counterpart of the Chamber. Its members, paws in air, had passed the Bill by a large majority; the Congregations were successfully throttled, and the goal patiently aimed at for many years was at last reached.

The Pope had spoken, condemning the provisions of the new Law, but, under certain reservations, leaving individuals free to submit themselves, if they chose, to the rule of the Ministry of Public Worship. No agreement was to be thought of between the rival and divergent Congregations; hence there was no hope of any united resistance; under the circumstances, Rome’s decision was a wise one. Even those few among the monks who were for fighting the measure could not but admit that the Pope was right.

At Val-des-Saints, formerly such a haven of peace, people now began to make plans for the future; the Fathers thronged the Scriptorium or reading-room to look at the Catholic magazines and newspapers; they read them in silence, and, during the recreation, discussed them with many a quaint comment.

This little world, which knew nothing of the world without and, till then, had cared nothing for politics, now began to ask itself what dreadful evil it could have done to deserve such a punishment.

This buzzing, this hum, like that in a hive which is being smoked out, was heard even in the novitiate.

"In the eyes of those who condemn you, you have committed the most un pardonable of crimes, that of not sinning against God." Such was Durtal’s explanation to Brother Gèdre, who consulted him.

All the monks haunted the corridors, eager for news. The Abbot was at Solesmes and they were waiting impatiently for him to write to the Prior, telling them how and when they would leave.

"No news," said M. Lampre to Durtal as they came out of church together after High Mass; "but we know beforehand what the resolution of the Chapter of Abbots will be, so that Dom Bernard’s letter will tell us nothing new. It means exile before very long, only the place of banishment is not fixed, and probably won’t be fixed yet a while. But as you are lunching with me today, why not come home with me now and we will have a look at my illuminated manuscripts to give us an appetite."

"I shall be delighted," said Durtal.

M. Lampre’s house, standing quite near the church and monastery, was one of those big, ordinary buildings so often seen in country towns. It had a fusty smell, suggestive of fish-glue and apples, but the rooms were convenient and full of comfortable old furniture. It was M. Lampre’s family property, like the ruins of the old monastery, which, with all the surrounding land, he had made over to the monks.

All that he had kept for himself was a large garden which he had divided off by a wall from that of the Abbey, to make each one private his garden, planted with age-old trees, had broad paths bordered with flower-beds. Alongside one of these paths was a shrubbery of roses of every shape and colour, among them being that rather ugly customer, the green rose. his roses, collected and maintained at great expense, had quite a name in Burgundy.

"And yet, do you know," he said to Durtal one day, "horticulture is not in the least a hobby of mine, but I make it my duty to like it, and I spend money on it to keep up my interest in it."

And when Durtal, who had been admiring certain floral fireworks, looked at him rather blankly, he added,

"It is quite simple. I am so lazy and so bad a walker that I shouldn’t stir out of doors, not even to go to my garden, if it were not for the very workaday motive that pushes me to inspect my plants, in order to see that the money is not all lost that I spend on their purchase and upkeep. I have a look at a bed of plants here, or a border there, and, without noticing it, I am all the while trotting about. Horticulture serves me as a leg-stretcher more than as an eye-charmer. This is an odd way of looking at it, but at any rate it is useful and consequently justified."

"I wonder what he did when he lived in Society?" Durtal sometimes asked himself. What one knew about him amounted to very little. As a young man, M. Lampre had studied at the Ecole des Chartes and for a long while lived in Paris. He had remained a bachelor, and his only living relative was the daughter of a sister of his who married a M. de Garambois, a Prefect under the Second Empire. His sister and her husband were dead, and of his niece he did not see much, as she had always lived with nuns or near cloisters of Solesmes. It was not till she settled in Val-des-Saints that their relationship became a closer one though really fond of each other, they were always ready to quarrel, and did not meet very frequently.

According to monkish gossip, M. Lampre — who had been a very wealthy man previous to losing much of his fortune by various youthful escapades — had led a rather gay life, had been converted and, henceforth, had lived a life of seclusion in his house at Val-des-Saints, where he was known for his hot temper and his kind heart.

He and Durtal got on well together, for they had tastes in common. Lampre had but little acquaintance with contemporary literature and, in the matter of modern art, he was quite behind the times. In his capacity of collector he cared for very few things. In painting he stopped short even before the Early Masters, preferring illuminated MSS. and, in monastic history, he attached value only to cartularies and technical treatises.

Of these he possessed a very full collection; in particular he had some beautiful fourteenth and fifteenth-century Books of Hours, which the monks much coveted, and which, indeed, he had promised to bequeath to them. He had in the past spent large sums in acquiring such treasures, but now the times were leaner; he had been obliged to help towards establishing the monks whom he had fetched from Solesmes, and, during the first few years, had even provided for their maintenance; the result was that he grumbled at them for hindering him from still spending his money on his hobbies, though all the while he was pleased to be able to help them.

When in a bad humour, he used to growl: "What do I ask of them in exchange for all the fine bargains that I missed on their account? Simply that they should become saints, and now my money is thrown away, for the rascals are laughing up their sleeve." Then, having vented his wrath, he was once more only too ready to help.

Besides his passion for charters and miniatures, he, as a true son of Burgundy, had another hobby; this was a well-stocked cellar, and sometimes, seated at table, he would deplore the many years that he had not been able to get any Beaune-Hospice, "because the d--d Benedictines had collared it all."

Such regrets were sheer delight to his niece, whom he was wont to charge with greediness.

"Each ought to make allowances for the other," she used to say, "for we have all got our little craze and our pet sin. Mine is a love of dainties and my uncle’s is a fondness for choice old Burgundy."

But not for a moment would he allow that such a comparison was justified. A love of choice wine, he argued, had something almost noble about it, for there was a certain beauty, a certain artistic charm in the taste and the colour and the bouquet of a Corton or a Chambertin; whereas greed for cakes and pasties betrays a middle-class feeling and a coarse and vulgar taste. After such manner was he given to rebuking her, only to her greater amusement.

That morning she was due to lunch at her uncle’s, and, while waiting for her to appear, M. Lampre took Durtal to the room where, on oak shelves, were ranged the monastic chronicles and records.

It was a big room, papered in grey with a design in poppies; there were armchairs upholstered in pale yellow velvet, mahogany tables and an Empire writing-desk with clover-shaped lock.

Durtal examined the library shelves, but few only of the bulky tomes interested him, for, as in all such collections, there were heaps of hooks that were as unintelligible to him as to M. Lampre.

It was the Books of Hours that charmed him most; these were arranged in the secretaire and enclosed in cases. M. Lampre was not generally disposed to show these; he kept them jealously for his private delectation, though he had often let Durtal see them; but it was well to let him propose the opening of the cases, otherwise he would usually turn a deaf ear to any request of the sort.

That morning, however, it was he who offered to unlock his treasures, so there was no difficulty on this score.

It was always a treat to look at these marvels.

"I haven’t got many," he said, "but those that I did lay hands on at the sales are really fine specimens." And with a sigh he acknowledged that, for one of these books, he had paid thirty thousand francs. It was a magnificent copy of the Horae beatae Mariae Virginis, a small quarto in sixteenth-century binding, worked in open-leaf tracery, written towards the end of the fourteenth century by a Flemish hand; it was in Gothic characters, on vellum, each page being elaborately framed by the painter; and this volume of about three hundred pages contained some fifty miniatures on gold backgrounds, amazing portraits of the Virgins of the Nativity, girlish, pouting, melancholy faces; St. John’s, youthful and beardless, seated near an eagle in pretty rooms of which the leaded windows open on to green landscapes through which pale roads lead to little crenulated keeps; and the more comprehensive scenes, such as the Angels’ summons to the Shepherds, the Visitation, and Calvary, were treated with a good-natured realism and such childlike piety as to he really, touching.

"Here," said M. Lampre, "is a Diurnal which did not cost so much, but which is nevertheless very curious. Notice the way in which the artist has depicted the Holy Trinity; it is quite different from the well-known pattern followed by most mediaeval iIIuminators, with the Holy Ghost soaring in the form of a dove above the Father and the Son. Here, the Father, crowned with a sort of Papal tiara and seated on the edge of a golden halo shaped like an almond, with His feet resting on the world as His footstool, holds in His lap Jesus, who also, in the same way, holds the Paraclete, portrayed as a smiling, fairhaired boy. Isn’t it strange?"

"And no less strange," cried Durtal, "is the state of preservation of this manuscript. The colours are as brilliant as when they were first put on," and he looked in amazement at their fresh, clear tints, at the reds untouched by time, at the golds yet untarnished, at the pale blue heavens still as limpid as ever.

"Ah, they didn’t buy their colours in the oilshops, and aniline was not yet invented," replied M. Lampre. "They crushed and pounded their colours themselves, extracting them from certain minerals, earths, and plants.

"We are not without some knowledge of their recipes; this rather pasty white is made of calcined bone, that other clearer shade is white lead; this black is made with charcoal of vine shoots this blue with lapis-lazuli; that yellow comes from dyers’ greenweed and saffron; this brilliant red is minium or red lead that brownish red is macra, or Neapolitan earth; this green comes from the blossom of the iris or from the fruit of the buckthorn; this blue turning to violet is not obtained, as you might think, from mixing blue and pink, but from the sunflower mixed with urine.

"Their prescriptions read strangely, but they were effective enough, for none of their shades of colour have suffered change. They mostly used white of egg for mixing purposes, destroying its gummy quality with water from the laundry kept standing for a fortnight, and its frothiness by adding a little ear-wax. To fix the gold leaf they first rubbed the parchment with the spittle of a man who was fasting or had not recently had a meal; then they used as size a confection into which entered gum adragant, Armenian bole and honey. From a recipe found at Dijon among accounts relating to Malonel the painter, they also used a gelatine extracted from the fins of the codfish."

But Durtal was no longer listening, absorbed as he was in the brilliant pages before him. "Ah," said he, as he shut the book, "what a delightful frail, blue-eyed, goldenhaired little girl was Illumination, who, in giving birth to her big daughter Painting, was fated to die!

"But she did not die before having reached the utmost height of her art, with such artists as Fouquet, Jacquemart of Hesdin, André Beauneven, Simon Marmion, the Limbourg brothers, and, in her last years, with that amazing Bourdichon, who painted the Hours for Anne of Brittany.

"Regarding those artists who worked for princes and kings, we have some knowledge, for their names and details of their work are found in archives and treasury registers. But how many are quite unknown! And in the cloisters, where miniature painting took its rise, but where monks sometimes forgot to hand down the names of their artists, how many lost or anonymous masterpieces must there be! And how many attributed to laymen who were really only imitators or pupils!"

"Of course," went on M. Lampre after a pause, as he opened the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, "of course, this manuscript is a wonder, but, between ourselves, my dream would have been to possess paintings, less perfect, perhaps, but earlier, and about whose monastic origin there was less doubt; for instance, that Bible mentioned in the Chronicles of Cluny, which was copied and illuminated by Albert of Treves and bound by the Cluny artists in a binding of gold and jewels, beryls and rubies. Or, better still, a volume by the monk named Durand, who illustrated so beautifully the liturgical books of the Abbey, that when he died, as a token of gratitude nd of admiration, the Abbot had a double Office chanted for him.

"To get those books I would have sold house, land and all I possess. Who were those monks that were able to fascinate their contemporaries by such works of art? We don’t know. The Cluny Chronicles and the biographies of some of the Abbots are sometimes detailed enough, but they tell us little about the life of these miniature-painters, whom they merely mention in a lump with architects, jewellers, book-binders, fashioners of sacred images, glasspunters, and all the other craftsmen who came from every region and filled the monastery, for Cluny was a very school of mystic art in all its forms."

"To say nothing of the writers," added Durtal, "men like St. Mazeul, St. Odilo, St. Hugh, Peter the Venerable, and others who were not canonized but who left behind instructive biographies; Syrus, that of St. Mazeul; Jotsand, that of St. Odilo and the famous Rudolf, whose universal History has, ever since mediaeval times, been so often quoted.

"But it was, above all, its architects who formed the glory of the Abbey. I remember going to see the remains of the Abbey, now used as a training school and stud farm; the basilica, judging by its ruins, was at once graceful and enormous; this gigantic church, with its many bell-towers, its porch as big as the church of Notre Dame at Dijon, its five naves, its decorated pillars, whose capitals were carved with leaves, birds and fanciful animals, its three hundred windows, letting in the light through coloured saints, its two hundred and twenty-five stalls in the choir; all this produced the impression of a colossal and quite unique monument of the Romanesque style, of which proportions have never been surpassed by the Gothic."

"There is no doubt about it, that they were grand fellows, those two monks who built that giant church — Gauzo, who planned it, and Hazelo, who carried out the work."

"Nor were those two the only ones," said M. Lampre. "Many other architects, whose names are forgotten, but who were also Cluniacs, went further afield and built the five edifices at Paray-le-Monial, St. Etienne at Nevers, of Vezelay, of Charité-sur-Loire, of Montienneuf, of Souvigny, not to speak of many others.

"The Abbots left their subjects free to choose their own aesthetic patterns; they respected the temperament of their artists; this deference on their part accounts for the extreme variety of style which we notice in these structures; Viollet le Due was certainly wrong when lie spoke of a Cluniac style, for no such thing ever existed; there was only the Romanesque style, which the Cluniac architects utilized, each after his own fashion, working for the glory of God, according to his own personal ideas, and to the best of his power."

"Ah, what a spot was Cluny!" exclaimed Durtal. "There we see the Opus Dei, the dreamed-of ideal! Cluny was the real home of the arts, and I always think that, if our modern Congregation of France wants to justify its existence it must go back to that source."

"It is all very well to talk," said M. Lampre, "but you’ve got either to find, or to create, godly men of talent in every branch of art, and that’s no light task."

"Of course not; but just imagine that, in Paris, we had a monastery and church built by Dom Mellet, the monkarchitect of Solesmes, and that a colony of monks from the same Abbey, led by Dom Mocquereau, chanted the plain-song; think, too, of ceremonial, vestments, statues and everything else of the very best. The success of the Benedictines would be prodigious. Even the snobbish world would be drawn, just as it was by the troupe of Saint Gervais; at any rate, it would help make the movement fashionable.

"And many a vocation would come to artists fascinated by the splendour of such surroundings, and the Benedictines would quite easily rake in the money they want. Besides this, they would greatly hasten the triumph of the Gregorian chant by thus establishing it in the very heart of Paris and eventually they would fill such a place in Art that no Government would dare to touch them.

"But to reach such results one has to do things in grand style and — as our industrialists say — make a big job of it; the singing would have to be perfect and the building and the ceremonial would have to be of no less sumptuous proportions. Solesmes alone was big enough to face such an undertaking; but, owing to disastrous circumstances quite beyond his control, the Abbot was unable to found a house in Paris. The same ill-luck pursued him as at Solesmes itself, when Dom Contourier wanted to revive the art of illumination."

"Dear me so you know of that?"

"Why, yes, Dom Felletin told me about the scheme, and mentioned the name of an oblate who was very clever at that sort of thing."

"You mean Anatole Foucher? Yes, I used to see something of him at one time."

"He taught the nuns at St. Cécile, did he not?"

"Yes, and also the nuns of the Rue Monsieur, in Paris, for now miniatures are painted only in the nunneries of the Order. Some of the specimens I have seen, designed and coloured by these Paris nuns and by those of Dourgne, are really charming, both for their technical excellence and for time fervour that they exhale.

"Many women of the world have also tried to imitate their work, but I need not describe the hash they made of the Liturgy and the insipidity of their designs, fit only to adorn chocolate-boxes, or to be set beside the babyish, pious chromos of Messrs Bouasse et Lebel."

"Yes. I know the productions you mean. I once saw some in Paris, when a society of aristocratic daubers held an exhibition of them in elegant drawing-rooms. But, worse still, there is now a new School, that applies mediaeval processes to modern secular subjects; wretched amateurs who make their muddy gold backgrounds serve as a setting for a few cheap turquoises and third-rate pearls. The thing is a sheer imposture, an absolute travesty of the art of illumination I doubt if it could ever be subjected to baser treatment at the hands of people whose taste is wholly vile."

"As I told you just now, before it completely disappeared, the art for a time was practised by Fouches and his pupils behind their convent-grill. I also remember having read somewhere that the Benedictine nuns of Marédret in Belgium illustrated a fine manuscript of the Rule of Saint Benedict which the Abbot of Maria Laach presented to the German Emperor. That is all I know.

"I am late," cried Mlle. de Garambois, entering the room like a gust of wind, "but it is Father Felletin’s fault, who detained me in the parlour."

"Lunch is ready," said M. Lampre as he saw the servant open the dining-room door, "let us go in first. You can make your excuses afterwards."

"I am furious," she said when they were seated, "I could not go to Communion this morning because Dom Felletin did not turn up yesterday to hear my confession at Dijon ashe promised to do. He has just explained tome that he couldn’t catch the train, as, at the last moment, something prevented him. Really, since the new curé was appointed, our position at Val-des-Saints has become quite absurd!"

"You are right," replied Durtal, "just imagine, on Whit-Sunday, the feast of the Holy Ghost, the Fathers could not officiate in the church, just because it was Sunday, and the curé did not see his way to let them use it; the monks had to do as best they could with a Choral Mass in that wretched little chapel where one is boxed up and nearly stifled."

"When I remember the same feast a year ago, with its Pontifical Mass, and the procession of monks whose black and white set off the brilliant vestments of red and gold; when I remember the Veni, Creator taken up by all the monks and flung aloft to the vaultings with waves of organ music, and then think of the wretched service in that stuffy little hole of a chapel, my blood boils and I wish all the demons would seize this Bishop and his underling."

"But there was nothing to hinder you from going to attend Mass and Vespers at the Parish-church," said M. Lampre, laughing.

"Ah!" cried Durtal, "last Sunday, if you please, I slipped into the church for Benediction and there I saw one of the funniest performances imaginable. Baron des Atours was standing in front of an harmonium, while his big lout of a son with his clammy fingers was fumbling at the keys.

"After carelessly stroking the back of his bald pate with his bejewelled hand, the Baron twisted his stubbly moustache and, glancing heavenwards, sang some amazing verses of which I only remember the closing couplets:

"Christ my ambrosia shall be,
My sweetest honey too,
And I shall be His loved abode
His little sky of blue."

"Can’t you picture to yourself the Baron as Christ’s ’little sky of blue’? The peasants in their wonder gaped like oysters, while our curé beat time with his head and smiled a complacent, happy smile."

"Yes," replied M. Lampre, "I admit that, with his haughty demeanour and his pretensions to rank as a singer, Baron des Atours looks rather ridiculous, but, apart from that, it is only just to say that at heart he is a good fellow and does a lot to help the friendly societies at Dijon. And his son, too, is not quite such a duffer as he seems. He is a straightforward youth, and always at work, but the pity of it is that lie is so very provincial. But, here’s something provincial, too, which I can thoroughly recommend," he continued, as with untold care he uncorked a bottle. "This wine is from the Commaraine vineyard in the Pommard region; our forefathers described it as ’a loyal, rosy and saleable wine.’ At all events it has a bouquet clue to its age and good cellaring. Look! it pours out like liquid rubies."

"And yet you blame me for being greedy!" exclaimed Mlle. de Garambois.

"My dear niece, choice wines are products of monastic art like architecture, like illumination, like everything that is beautiful arid excellent here below. Clos Vougeot and Chambertin, the pride of this Burgundy of ours, come from vineyards formerly tilled, one by Cistercians and the other by Cluniacs. Citaux owned vineyards at Corton and La Romanée. The records of Volney mention, as being within the territory of this commune, the vineyard of St. Andoche which belonged to the Benedictine Abbey of that name. The Cistercians at Maizières, and later on the Carmelites, grew grapes at Savigny-les-Beaune, and, as you know, the Beaune wine was praised as being sustaining, theological and salutary. There’s no denying it, the most famous wines of our province are due to the viticultural art of the cloisters.

"Moreover, that it should be so was only to be expected. Wine is a sacramental substance. In many a page of the Bible it is extolled, nor could our Lord find anything more noble to change into His own Blood. Therefore it is meet and our bounden duty to love wine."

"But doctors are beginning to forbid it," said Mlle. de Garambois.

"Doctors are a pack of noodles," replied M. Lampre; "besides rejoicing the heart of man, as the Bible declares, wine is a tonic far more potent and sure in its action than iron and drugs of that sort which one cannot digest. Nowadays folk with stornachic disorders are forbidden to drink it, yet our fathers constantly used it for such complaints. Erasmus tells us, that, in his day, they cured such ailments with repeated doses of old Beaune. The truth is that our Lord, that He might show them to us and ennoble them, chose just the two substances — bread and wine — which He deemed most precious, and appointed them for the purpose of ensuring health and salvation of both body and spirit. To refuse to make use of them is to snap one’s fingers at His teaching."

"Yes, uncle, but there is another point of view which it seems to me you forget, and that is the liturgical point of view. You admit, don’t you, that the sublime ideal of Cluny, of praising God with pomp and splendour arid of dedicating to Him all that is best and most beautiful, is right and proper?"

She paused waiting for her uncle to give some sign of approval. But he, smelling a rat, remained silent. Taking his silence as a sign of assent, she went on:

"Don’t you think then that the wine offered to our Lord, to be changed into His precious Blood, ought to be as choice and sumptuous as the ceremonial observed in our Order? Hence, the best brands of white wine ought to be given to the monks for them to use as altar-wine; and with you, your cellars well stocked with genuine Montrachet and Pouilly, would be doing a godly deed if you deprived yourself of them for the sake of the altar. By so doing you would also be setting me an example of mortification, which, no doubt, I should find very profitable."

"Ah! so that’s what you are driving at! Under the pretext of doing honour to the Most High, you want me to encourage His priests to gratify this taste for good wine at the Mass. Well, I have not the slightest intention of doing anything of the kind. If you come to think of it, and pit sin against sin, it is less grievous, and God is less offended if I commit it sitting before a glass at table than that a priest should commit it standing before a chalice in church. So, if you will excuse me, in the interests of religion itself, I intend to keep my Montrachet and Pouilly for my own use, and, with the piety and good sense that distinguish you, I feel sure that, on reflection, you will see that I am right."

"I haven’t scored this time," said Mlle. de Garambois, laughing, "in fact, I was pretty sure he would get the best of it. But come, my dear Durtal, to go back to the subject of our unfortunate position at Val-des-Saints; how does poor Madame Bavoil manage about confession, as she is in the same boat with me?"

"Why, she can’t often go to Dijon to meet Father Felletin, for, if she did, there would be no house-keeping and no cooking done, so she has to do as well as she can with the curé. But she goes to hum under protest and is very sore at having to confess, as she puts it, to a little man who knows nothing. I try to comfort her by pointing out the wisdom of God, who has withheld from her her former spirited experiences, in order that she may not have to enter into mystical discussions with such a man, but it’s all no good."

"Perhaps it is just as well, for worries of that sort will help to make her less sorry to go, if you have to leave when the monks do."

Durtal shifted awkwardly.

"The idea of moving all my books and of carting away all my curios and furniture is so distasteful that I had rather not face it."

"You know," said M. Lampre, "all the Fathers won’t leave the district."

"How’s that?"

"Well, first of all, there’s the vineyard which is the principal resource of the Abbey; they must leave behind at least Father Paton and the lay-brothers whom he employs to look after it. One or two monks will also have to remain as caretakers of the property, so that we shall always have some here."

"But suppose the Government seizes the buildings and the vineyard?"

"Fiddlesticks!" I made over the old Priory and the adjoining land to the Abbey, but I was not such a fool as not to take precautions against any legal spoliation; in other words, I rebuilt the house and let it on lease to the Benedictines. The indentures and invoices are in my name and it is I who personally settled the accounts of both builders and architect. The Benedictines, on the strength of a duly registered deed, have to pay me every quarter one-fourth of the yearly rental of ten thousand francs; in return I give them a receipt, whether they give me the money or not," said M. Lanlpre, with a smile; "anyhow the documents are there, and they show that I am sole owner of house and lands; moreover, as this is my family property, they can’t say that I specially acquired it in order to settle monks there; in this case there is no question of any mere trustee.

"So likewise with the vineyard; it was also bought in my name, and paid for by me through a lawyer. The deeds prove this, and I am also supposed to have rented it to them for the purposes of cultivation, so that my rights from a legal point of view are unassailable."

"Yes, but they might prevent the Bendictines from being your tenants."

"Anything is possible with these grabbers; but nobody can forbid Father Paton, once he is released from his vows to join the secular clergy of the diocese of Dijon where he was born. Nor could they stop him from hiring my vineyard, not as a monk, but as an ordinary citizen. In the same way the lay-brothers will also put off their monks’ habit and will be engaged as farm labourers. I have already talked this over with the Abbot and we are both agreed to take this course of action.

"So, whatever happens, even it I have to go to law and the case drags on for years, the monastery will never be entirely empty, and perhaps we may find a way of holding services and so forth."

"By the way who is this Father Paton?" asked Durtal. "One never runs across him. He appears in church and then goes out by the sacristy door. Nobody seems to have anything to do with him."

"Father Paton was formerly a curé; he is a great authority on viticulture, and a very mortified man; would there were many more like him at Val-des-Saints! He is an excellent man, who slaves away from morning till night like any peasant, and who keeps to himself simply because his work is quite different from that of the others. I might add that he has some lay virtues : for instance, he doesn’t inform against his fellow-monks, nor deem denunciation a virtue. In him we shall have a good spiritual director, rugged but devoted, a man who really loves souls."

"What you tell me is balm for my sore heart; perhaps, after all, we shall not leave. You can’t think what a nightmare the prospect of going to Paris is for me."

"Wait a bit before making up your mind. Things will turn out better than you think. You will see that we shall pull through somehow."

"The fact is, uncle, it’s you who really hold the key of the situation," said Mlle. de Garambois.

"Yes, in a way. At any rate, I am the screen, protected by law and procedure, and I warrant you it will take a mighty blast to blow me down!"

"Once, in the course of a walk," said Durtal, "I went to see the monastery vineyard. It is extensive and very well placed. I suppose they use it for making altar-wine?"

"Yes, and not such bad wine, either. The slope on which the vineyard lies is of limestone marl, reddened by the presence of iron oxide. The soil is like that of some of the Pommard vineyards. Father Paton has planted some small-grape vines there, and in a few years, if the seasons are good, they will yield not only sacramental wine, but a quite passable table-wine; when that happens, the Abbey will be rich.

"Meanwhile, the sale of the white wines almost suffices to pay the community expenses. Hence, at all costs, we must save this vineyard, for, if the monks settle abroad, it will help to keep them, otherwise it will be a case of famine, if not of utter ruin."

"Good; let us admit that the Government can’t confiscate the vineyard; yet, even so, Dom Paton and his helpers couldn’t live in the precincts, for they would be prosecuted for attempting to re-establish an unauthorized Congregation."

"It would not be advisable for Father Paton and his lay brothers to live in the monastery itself. They will be quartered outside; each of us will take one in, and, even if the police put seals on the doors of the chapels, the Office will be recited in some room or other, in one of the houses."

"I hope to God it will be so!" cried Durtal, as he rose to take his leave.

"What! You are surely not going yet? Why, it isn’t even four."

"Yes, we have talked such a long while that it is close upon Vespers. Don’t you hear the first bell?"

"Vespers?" said M. Lampre, with a stern glance at his niece; "why, so it is. And you dare to wear white ribbons on your hat and a tie of the same colour? What about the holy Liturgy?"

"Why," replied his niece in amazement, "today is a simple, and the Office is of our Lady, so that the colour is white."

"I beg your pardon, the Vespers are halved; they are like ice-creams, half white and half green. In the Ordo you will see that, from the Little Chapter, they are ’of the following day,’ i.e., of the ninth Sunday after Whitsun, that is, green. A liturgist of your calibre ought to know that the tabernacle-veil is changed halfway through the service. Hence at that moment you ought to put on green ribbons and a green tie! I hope you have them handy, so as to be able to change."

"That is his revenge," laughed Durtal, "for your wanting him to part with his Montrachet and Pouilly."

"But I’ll pay him back yet "said Mlle. de Garambois.

"If M. Lampre manages to keep the monks here, you won’t pay him back at all; on the contrary, we shall all of us bless him."

"Yes, indeed," she replied, as she put on her hat; "for I simply couldn’t abide this place without the daily Office, and I would rather follow in the wake of the monastery if it migrates to Belgium."

"She is quite capable of doing so," grunted her uncle, as he put on his overcoat to go with her to Vespers.

Chapter XII

"IT is here at Dijon that Dutch sculpture is to be seen in all its glory," thought Durtal as he walked round the Well of Moses, which he had again come to look at, in the Lunatic Asylum built on the site of the old Champmol Chartreuse, about ten minutes’ walk from the station.

This establishment — which one could visit without any need of meeting the patients — would have been an ideal refuge for the dreamer if only he could have sat down quietly in front of this Well without always being dogged by the attendant, who waited whilst one looked at the sculptures, anxious to shut the railing that encloses them, and to show one the shortest way out.

Dijon, usually so hospitable, was unbearable here.

So, when he had gazed his fill upon this masterpiece of Sluter and his pupils, Durtal walked away, still meditating on it, to the delightful Botanical Gardens, alongside the railway-line to Plombières.

Seen in the morning sunlight, the leaves of the tall trees in the grounds of the Asylum were flecked with gold. Light and shade abounded, and, on the way to the Well, a close-set hedge of cypress trees filled the air with a faint, resinous perfume.

In a lonely courtyard stood the monument erected by command of Philippe le Hardi, by Claus Sluter, with the assistance of the most skilful artists of the time.

The structure stood in the Well itself, by the water of which it was surrounded; it rested on a hexagonal pedestal on the sides of which were statues of the six prophets who foretold the Passion of Christ above this was a platform supported by six weeping angels. Formerly on this platform there was a Calvary, sonic fragments of which were still preserved in the town museum.

The whole was covered by an enormous wire cage, roofed in at the top, while, round the edge of the wail, was a wooden flooring and a railing, over which one could look down at the stagnant water in which the moss-grown base of the pedestal stood.

On this sort of balcony a good view could be obtained of the life-size statues of the prophets hewn out of blocks of stone; the statues had been painted by Malouci, but the flight of ages had now reduced them to their natural dull, greyish hue.

The most arresting of these statues, the one that instantly impressed you by its vehemence, was that of Moses.

Wrapped in a mantle whose folds were as supple as those of real cloth, he grasped with one hand the Tables of the Law and with the other a scroll on which was the verse of Exodus, "The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill the lamb in the evening."

The head was enormous, with long hair, the forehead bulging and wrinkled in angular lines above the eyes, winch had a hard, wicked, almost insolent look; the beard was parted, flowing down in two huge waves over his breast; the nose was like an eagle’s beak and the mouth was imperious and pitiless. Peering forth from its wild-beast’s mane, the face looked utterly relentless; it was the face of a stern judge and a despot; the face of a bird of prey Moses seemed to be listening to the faltering excuses of the guilty tribes, readier to punish than to pardon this hebrew rabble which he well knew to be capable of treachery and everything shameful.

This figure of the tempest about to break had an aspect almost superhuman, far excelling in eloquence and lofty bearing that other Moses created by Michael Angelo less than a century later; the latter was also a horned Moses, with a beard like a river-god; but it is merely a colossus, robust and majestic indeed, but top heavy and empty.

But unfortunately Sluter’s Moses was the only figure in the group that rose above mere realism. It stood on a higher plane than the other statues, which, admirable in their way, had nothing to lift them out of the common. Of these the most typical was that of King David, which suffered all the more by being juxtaposed to Moses.

He wore a crown, had long, curly hair, and a beard divided under the chin into two tufts; one hand rested on a lyre and the other held a phylactery on which were the words: "They have pierced my hands and feet; they have numbered all my bones."

This David had the placid features of some worthy, fair-haired Dutchman, the puffy middle-class face of a man fed on smoked ham and sauerkraut and fattened with strong ale. Such a figure might well have served Jordaens as a model for his drinking King. The expression of the face is dull rather than distressed, sleepy rather than dreamy. As a northerner’s portrait this statue is perfect; it shows him as a wealthy, rather supercilious person, one who knows better how to handle a tankard than a lyre; but as a portrait of David the Psalmist it is wholly unsatisfying.

The Prophet Jeremiah, placed next to him, looks more serious and collected. Wearing a hood, clean-shaven, with a hooked nose and with eyes shut, he holds in his right hand a wide-opened book, and in the left a banderole with the inscription: "All ye who pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto mine."

The face is more thoughtful than sad; it might be that of one of the monks of the Chartreuse of Champmol who, no doubt, served as a model at all events, it is that of a priest in the act of meditating. It must have been taken from life and is obviously a striking likeness; but what has this peaceful monk or priest to do with Jeremiah, whose life of trial and sorrow is supposed to foretell the sufferings of Christ?

The same question might be asked with regard to Zachariah, who wears a weird hood that suggests the capital of a pillar or a pie. In a lackadaisical way he droops his head which might be that of a vine-dresser; his upper lip is shaven, but he wears a flowing beard; surely enough, such an old man must have come from behind a counter, for we can just imagine him getting ready his barrels and casks to send them to the wine-shops; trial and suffering had ennobled this tradesman’s face of his, yet it still is reminiscent of the wine-merchant. Was it really the inscription on his parchment scroll: "They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver," that caused him such distress? Judging by appearances, he would seem to be lamenting the loss of a vintage rather than the death of the Word.

Different again is Daniel, his neighbour, who sternly points to his phylactery, on which is written, "After sixty weeks Christ shall be slain." He stands there, as though arguing angrily with those who disbelieve him. In this silent group, he alone speaks; he is assertive, not in the least tearful; clearly he had been a quick-tempered Burgundian, impatient of contradiction. He wears a loose turban, a robe and girdle, and his splendid mantle is elaborately embroidered. We see him in profile; his nose is like a bill-hook, his hair is wavy, and his beard curled into little knobs. He might be a lawyer or well-to-do merchant, or, perhaps, the inn-keeper who bought Zachariah’s wines.

Lastly, Isaiah serves to show, equally with, if not more than the others, how absolutely unlike the statues are to the persons whom they are supposed to represent. Isaiah appears to be some old Jew; a Rabbi of the Judengasse, a patriarch of the Ghetto. He has a round, bald head, a wrinkled brow and deeply-furrowed cheeks; his nose is sharp, his beard forked, and his long moustache droops like a Chinaman’s. With heavy-lidded half-closed eyes he faces you sadly. He has a book under one arm, and carries a scroll in the other on which are the words : He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

At no period has there been evolved from stone an image more impressive or more life-like; but here the same question again confronts you: Is there the remotest resemblance between this sad, weary octogenarian and the Old Testament Evangelist, the hasty, scolding Isaiah?

With the exception of the Moses, whose grand, Ieonine aspect really does hit off that extraordinary man, Sluter’s other prophets only portray a famished Gambrinus, a Carthusian or a priest, a vine-dresser, a shop-keeper or a Jew.

As Durtal walked round them, an explanation occurred to him: Clearly these personages fail taIly with their predictions; the events they foretell fail to move the features of these heralds of the future; now, why? Surely because Claus Sluter wished it to be so. These faces of his express concern, and that is all; they are uneasy, but the angels above them weep; in fact, in this work it is the angels who are made to figure as "weepers" or mourners, and, if we look closer, we may perceive the motives for this arrangement.

The prophets foresaw the Passion of the Messiah, so far as God allowed them to see it, and each of them repeats only the detail of which knowledge was vouchsafed. Thus one prophet completes the other, God having willed to grant to each a different vision instead of permitting one to see the whole. They must have been appalled by the knowledge that this unruly people whom they were commanded to warn and rebuke, would commit the most awful of crimes by crucifying Christ. Yet, when once the prophet had received and published among the tribes the Messianic revelation given him, he lived in the present, like other men; the future events, which he had not actually viewed with his own eyes, but which had only been perceived dimly in the Divine light, naturally would not be to him a perpetual cause for tears. So Sluter, perhaps, was right in not depicting them in a state of boundless grief, and in preferring that this grief should be manifested by the angels who, though they cannot themselves see into the future, have yet a deeper and more subtle knowledge than human beings, and, in any case, are independent of time and space.

Another point to be cleared up is to determine which of these sculptures were executed by his helpers. Besides Claus de Werve, who, as we know, carved the Angels, several sculptors worked under his orders, Hennequin de Prindale, Rogier do Westerhen, Pierre Aplemain, Vuillequin Semont, to cite four whose names occur to me. Another, called Jean Huist, seems to have been responsible for the foliage on the capitals. To what extent did they contribute towards completing the figures of the Well?

According to the accounts of the Champmol Chartreuse, preserved in the archives of the Côte d’Or, it appears that Claus de Werve and Hennequin de Prindale sculptured certain portions of the statues of the Prophets.

But which portions were these? Did they execute the decorative, ornamental part of the work? If so, one must admit that they were the most amazing craftsmen of their kind; for the embroidered harps on David’s mantle, the festoons, the leaves, and Greek crosses which trim those of Daniel and Isaiah; the carved buckles of their belts, the books held by Jeremiah and Isaiah, with their leaves of stone as flexible as leaves of vellum, and their elaborate binding — all this work is done with a skill that is simply marvellous. Never in the art of sculpture have accessories been more cleverly wrought or more carefully rendered.

But nothing proves that these artists confined themselves to still-life, and had not a hand, too, in fashioning the figure. The name of Siuter stands for all, and, failing more precise information, the glory goes to him alone and not to his humbler fellow-craftsmen.

At any rate, they were not mere workmen, but real artists, for, after Sluter’s death, one of them, Claus de Werve, became sculptor in ordinary to the Duke, and it was he who completed the tomb of Philippe le Hardi, which had been begun by de Marville and Sluter and is now in the town museum. This last work took him five years and he, in his turn, obtained the lion’s share of glory, though, he too, was helped by other sculptors.

"It is strange," murmured Durtal to himself; "how this Sluter, who lived at the end of the fourteenth century, gives us a taste of the Renaissance long before the death of the Middle Ages. His art is strangely in advance of the ideas of his century. If he no longer had the mystical conception of the image-makers of former centuries, if lie discarded their haggard faces, their priestly poses, and their slender, ascetic figures sheathed in stiff garments, he gave us, in exchange, attitudes that were less constrained and faces more like those of ordinary human beings; his handling of drapery was more supple and, above all, he showed a gift of observation and a power of breathing life into his work, which makes him rank among the greatest of artists of all time. He was certainly a pious man, for he ended his days in a cloister, and yet his art shows only a superficial, conventional sort of piety. His portraits are those of persons who were more interested in their own affairs than in those of God; his prophets are prophets of the market-place and of the fireside; his work was not the outcome of prayer, nor does it prompt people to pray before it; and that is where this sculpture falls short, when one views it from the standpoint from which it claims to be judged. If Sluter had not presented these figures to us as Biblical characters, if he had used them to adorn some secular monument and had simply labelled them as shopkeepers, priests and aldermen, then one could not but admire wholeheartedly the great talent of this man.

"Had the Calvary, which formerly stood on the top, a more religious feeling? I doubt it," continued Durtal. "Among the fragments which I saw at the museum was the head of Christ; artistically it is correct, devotional in conception and pathetic, but it is not over-earthly or divine, and, as for the Virgin, now over the doorway of the chapel close by, she looks like an angry woman, ready to whip a child for crying.

"I am not going to believe that this Virgin is by a man who, even if he lacked the mystical feeling, nevertheless could show us the epic grandeur of a Moses; he could never have conceived so false and vulgar a type of Virgin!

"No, what I prefer is the little Madonna of the fading fresco on the walls of Notre Dame at Dijon. After all, it seems to me that the real sense of the Divine is neither here nor at the museum, but rather in those painted prayers seen in that church.

"Yes, I know I am a bother," he said as he looked at the porter, who was jingling his bunch of keys as a broad hint, "You don’t care a fig for Sluter or Claus de Werve, though you got by heart their names in order to repeat them to tourists; but you ought at least bear in mind that these good Dutchmen are putting another half-franc into your pocket, for it is they who now, from beyond the grave, prompt me to give you your tip, and that’s only right after all, for nowadays we have to pay for everything, even for dreaming."

So saying, he left the Asylum.

He walked slowly towards the Botanical Garden which had been enlarged so as to take in the whole of the old Promenade de l’Arquebuse. It was a charming spot, with secluded paths, high trees, flower-beds and green lawns that were starred with daisies and buttercups.

The hornbeams reminded him of La Trappe of Notre Dame de l’Atre, and the stone benches against the eighteenth-century house that fronted the garden, recalled the old plantation at the Luxembourg.

In the morning, nurse-maids were wont to do their knitting near a huge poplar, whose hollow trunk formed a wooden grotto. This tree, which used to figure in old views of Dijon, was a mere shell looking like the gnarled hide of an elephant, encircled by bandages, with cast-iron stays, and propped up with crutches.

Here and there priests were reading their breviaries, and gardeners were wheeling about barrow-loads of flowers. Near the edges of the flower-beds one caught the scent of the iris, like honey and of freshly cut grass, but now and again this sugary perfume was swept away by the breeze which brought with it the pungent odour of the Bohemian olive of which there were specimens at the other end of the Garden-just three or four trees, with inky-black stems, silvery leaves and golden blossoms. The smell reminded one of over-ripe melons, stale strawberries, with a touch of linseed poultice.

Before sitting down Durtal strolled along the paths between the groups of trees. Among the conifers he noticed the blue cedar, various kinds of larches, pine trees, the wood of which is almost white, though the needles are nearly black. In the beds were salmon-pink roses, pale tea roses, and others the colour of sulphur; there was the Tribulus or Malta Cross, of the colour of hichromatc of potassium, and splendid hushes of monk’s-hood, with dark foliage and blossoms like turquoises, turquoises from which every trace of white has been removed.

"Yes," thought Durtal, "the monk’s-hood is a botanical turquoise, only of a purer shade of blue; nowadays the plant is a boon to actors whose overstramed vocal cords it soothes; yet our ancestors hated it, believed it to be the product of the foam of Cerberus and called it the most deadly of poisons and the swiftest in taking effect. But here, at least, by way of contrast, we have something of less evil repute, and ’ monastic’ as well," he continued, as he turned to look at a plant with sprays of whitest blossoms, rising like fountains, and crimson stems which bore great leaves of dark green. "That is rhubarb, the sour and stimulating rhubarb, called by the French the plant of the monks, because so much used by the monkish pharmacists whose favourite remedy it was. As a matter of fact, Father Philogone Mine used to give away quantities of it in powder or made up in pills, to the peasants of Val-des-Saints, when they complained of feeling unwell or run down.

"As for those beggars over there, they can’t pretend to such honour; indeed, their ugliness makes them fit to be classed with those plants of ill omen that flourish in forest glades, where witches in mediaeval days held their revels." This speech was addressed to a row of fleshylooking plants standing in pots in a corner.

Some were like bristly racquets or the lobes of giant ears covered with bristles; others were serpentine in shape, while others again hung down like the flabby unshaven cheeks of old men and others were like battledores or palettes; and, in the sun, their colours were horrible, mouldy green, jaundiced yellow, muddy violet, faded rose; some being brown like decayed toad-stools or damp cocoa.

Though this exhibition of monstrosities amused him for a while, that morning he was obsessed by the sculpture of the Well, and, above all, by Claus Sluter, whose personality haunted him. So he left these cacti and, sitting down on a vacant bench, he sought to recollect those few details which he had read concerning this artist.

He was known to have been born in the Netherlands, and may even, like his nephew Claus de Werve, have been a native of Hatheim in Holland. He settled in Burgundy, and, in 1384, he entered as a sculptor the studio of Jean de Marville, master image-maker to the Duke. After Marville’s death in 1389, he inherited his teacher’s title, worked at the tomb of Philippe le Hardi and adorned the gateway of the Chartreuse and the Well of Moses besides making various statues for the châteaux of Germolles and Rouvres.

What kind of man was he? Are we to agree with M. Cyprien Monget, who, in his scholarly book on the Chartreuse of Dijon, thinks that Sluter was a man whom it was hard to please and who was never satisfied, basing his argument on the fact that he was always repairing and altering the house allotted to him by the Duke, and that he was given to changing his workmen as one changes a shirt? M. Monget may be right, yet in defence of the other side it should be mentioned that the reports of the architects prove the house in question to have been in a sad state of dilapidation, and, as regards the workmen whom he imported from Flanders and Holland into a land of vineyards where wine was cheap, it is not at all unlikely that they may at times have been unmanageable.

After all, we know very little indeed about his mode of life or his character; but it is safe to say that, sometimes, his ideas were rather singular; a receipt from the bailiwick of Dijon informs us that he ordered from a goldsmith a pair of spectacles with which to ornament the nose of his statue of Jeremiah. One can only wonder what he intended by giving such an appendage to one of the prophets of the Bible. It were better to look upon this as a touch of eccentricity, rather than to believe that he only wanted to make more life-like his portrait of the Carthusian or curé who evidently served him as a model, for this would be proof absolute of a crude naturalism, of a want of understanding and of indifference to the religious subject with which he had set himself to deal.

If we know but little of his earlier life, we are more fully informed of his last days. Even before he had finished all the work commissioned by the Duke, he retired and went to live at the Augustinian Abbey of St. Etienne in Dijon, where, after a stay of two years, he died in 1405.

The contract drawn up between himself and Brother Robert de Beaubigney, Doctor in Canon Law and Abbot of this monastery, is to be found among the Departinental Archives of the Côte d’Or, and gives a good idea of Sluter’s mode of life in his closing days.

For the sum of forty gold francs, half of which was paid in advance, the monastery gave him, for life, the use of a room and a cellar for himself and a servant. Every Sunday he was entitled to twenty-eight little loaves, or rolls, or four every day, at his choice, also to wine, one pint and a half Dijon measure; on special days and feast days when the Canons Regular had ampler meals he was to be allowed a Canon’s portion. lie was free to have his meals in his room, or in the town, or in the refectory with the monks, but, in the last case, he had to bring his own bread and wine and be satisfied with the ordinary food of the Community, "Without any other pittance or provision."

Lastly, according to the terms of the contract, he became the feudal vassal of the Abbot and his monastery, he was also granted a part in the Masses, prayers and orisons of the said monastery, to which, in turn, he granted a part in the merit of his own prayers and orisons.

In short, he was just an oblate in an Augustinian Abbey. He lived there, he took his meals there when he liked, and he was free to work as it suited him and to leave the cloister to superintend his studios, which were established in some old stables of the Duke.

All this makes one think of those "Brothers of the Common Life," who, at that same period, prospered in Holland; they, too, had been placed by their Founders, Gerard and Radewyns, under the Rule of St. Augustine. Their little lay settlement at Deventer was made up of scholars and artists, who copied and illuminated manuscripts, occupied themselves with religious art and, at fixed hours, met together to pray.

"That was just what the oblatehood should be," said Durtal to himself. "As Dorn Felletin well says, there is no need to broaden it into a Third Order, which it isn’t, at least in the strict sense of the word. Modern Third Orders are excellent in their way, they, perhaps, contain the germ of a new sort of monachism, and, for their purposes, they suffice. But the oblates, being Benedictines, have to sanctify themselves by Liturgical means beyond this, they can have only one aim in view, viz., to revive Catholic Art which has fallen so low. At first sight it might seem that this task is more appropriate to the monks themselves, but the fact is that the monasteries will never get many monks from the ranks of the artists, for, with the lengthy services, sustained work is impossible. Hence, artistic work can be carried out only by entrusting it to laymen, who conform to certain ritual exercises, but who are free, and live outside the cloister.

"Yes, that is the true life of the oblate, as it was lived in the remote past, and such is the life that I myself lead at Val-des-Saints. But we are now within measurable distance of the end of this life, for the monks are leaving France Father Felletin’s plans and mine have all fallen through; hence, we must either renounce this form of secular monkhood, or else so transform it, that, while preserving its mediieval character, it may adapt itself to the needs of our time.

"Can this be done? I think it can, if the oblates are able to carry on alone under the spiritual direction of one or two Fathers whom a kindly Abbot may see his way to leave behind to continue this work in France.

"Obviously it won’t be easy to get members for this institution. To keep it in working order, many things will be needed-first and foremost, artists who are both pious and talented. Where are they to be found? I can’t say; but if none are forthcoming, it rests with God to create them, and if there are some, but scattered here and there in obscure corners of towns, to group them together. Then it will be necessary to form a sort of small monastic settlement, as there will be no more monasteries to which oblates might attach themselves; they will require a sanctuary of their own, where, to a certain extent, they can follow the Office of the Church. But for this to succeed, certain precautions would have to be taken.

"Thus, to avoid the disadvantages of a life in common and the gossip which is an unceasing source of trouble and disturbance, it would be necessary for each oblate to occupy a little house of his own, like those of the Carthusians, the only recluses who, since their foundation, have never needed reforming; so wisely and cleverly devised was their regime of solitude.

"This Carthusian Rule indeed prescribes silence and isolation, but at the same tunic it provides relief by the recital of the Office in church and, on certain fixed days, by meals eaten in common in the refectory and also by walks called in Carthusian phraseology ’Spatiamenta.’

"Now, evidently there is no question, of our following the Rule of St. Bruno, a Rule which is far too severe and too engrossing for laymen who don’t wish to fast perpetually, or to rise in the night, or to live in a monastery. The Carthusian spirit differs wholly from ours. But we might well adopt, in a yet milder and yet more extended form, its system of solitude, whilst in all other matters following the Rule of St. Benedict in its widest interpretation. In other words, our settlement would consist, not in one building, but in many little houses; our life would be less conventual and more personal; we should be free to go and come, and the time-table of the Office would be revised and curtailed so as to allow for uninterrupted work.

"This would be no innovation, as some might think; on the contrary, it would almost amount to a return to primeval monachism, when each monk lived in a separate hut and only met the others in church for prayers. It takes us back to the conventual parish like that of Agaunum in the Valois, which, in the sixth century, was ruled by St. Severinus: The system would be a mixed one, slightly Carthusian and very much Benedictine; for those who want comparisons, it would be of the type of those settlements of béguines so common in Belgium; an agglomeration of tiny houses, each inhabited by a lay-sister, where everybody assembles in a chapel when the bell is rung for service.

"Ah," sighed Durtal, "how can you help longing for such a life in God in which the Liturgy leads up to prayer coloured by Art, when, at Ghent or Bruges, you enter those tiny towns within the town and feel their peace and calm; those charming béguinages that smile at you, with their cheerful fronts, their walls sometimes in red brick, sometimes whitewashed, their steep roofs, their window-frames painted the green that Veronese loved, and behind the window bright-coloured blinds or flimsy curtains, and their doors opening on to large lawns with rows of elm-trees, and paths that lead to the old church where the sisters kneel in prayer with arms extended.

"There could be no more restful places than these, and at the same time more inspiring for a painter or a writer who for God’s glory desired to produce a picture or a book."

Still dreaming, Durtal briefly summarized for himself the statutes of such retreats. On entering, the béguine had to promise obedience to the Superior, the "great lady" as she is called, and to pledge herself strictly to observe the Rules; she had to undergo a two years’ novitiate before being definitely received, but she bound herself by no vow and might leave the enclosure when she wished; she also had to show that she had a yearly income of one hundred and ten francs, with the help of which, supplemented by her work, she provided for her needs. She wore a sort of nun’s habit and was obliged to attend certain services and also be home before nightfall; that was about all.

"Yes," thought Durtal, "but these little sheep-folds never thrive save in the Northern Europe. Nowadays they flourish only in Belgium and Holland; in France there is not a single one.

"As to why? No one knows. Possibly the less ebullient temperament, the good sense, the calm yet deep religious feeling, and the love of home of the Northern races may explain this anomaly. Even in the Middle Ages, in the ages of faith, we do not hear of the presence of such establishments in the south. Such settlements, whose origin dates from the end of the twelfth century, throve only in the north, the west, the east and also in the centre. There were plenty at Cologne, at Lübeck and Hamburg, also in Flanders, while in France they abounded, but south of the Loire they stop.

"In an article on the Paris béguines, M. Léon le Grand gives a list of houses of this sort, but can find none in the south. He mentions those in Picardy, at Laon, Amiens, Noyon, Beauvais, Abbeville, Condé and St. Quentin; in the east, at Reims, St. Nicholas du Port, and at Châlons; in the west, at Ronen, Caen, Nantes, Chartres, Orleans and Tours; in the environs of Paris, at Crépy, Melun and Sens; finally, in Paris itself, where St. Louis the King founded one in the parish of St. Paul.

"This settlement, which differed but slightly from the contemporary ones at Bruges and Ghent, fell into ruins after two centuries, owing to lack of members; in 1471, for instance, there were only two. Since then I know of only one attempt to revive such sisterhoods, and that a recent one. In 1855, an Abbé de Soubeiran tried to found such a house at Castelnaudary on the model of the Belgian ones, but his plan came to nothing. Evidently he had not realized that the soil of Languedoc was in no wise suited to this variety of conventual plant, for, to flourish, it needs silence and shade.

"Yet it seems to me that this semi-monastic system, followed by women, might be followed by men with a good chance of success.

"One can easily picture the setting in some big city like Paris. A settlement like those already established for sculptors and painters on the Boulevard Arago or in the Rue de Bagneux, for instance, with roadways bright with blossom, and with little houses and studies on either side; it would be easy to have at the back common rooms and an oratory; the whole would suggest a miniature monastery, a little béguinage, or an institute of lay Benedictines.

"But Benedictine it would have to be, for the Order of St. Benedict, unlike many others, admits artists; his Rule expressly states this; moreover, this work would be the logical outgrowth of the Office, the natural outcome of the intention of serving God with splendour. This work would be a thoroughly Benedictine, or, better still, a Cluniac one.

"But, will modern Benedictines help to carry it out? Can they do so? That is another question. Not that, for a moment, I hold with the theories of M. Lampre, who thinks that the good Fathers would be profoundly annoyed if they saw mere laymen, secular monks, doing a work of which they themselves were incapable. To think such a thing is to ascribe to the sons of St. Benedict sentiments which they certainly don’t share and to do them a great injustice. Besides, did they not, of old, encourage authors like Bulteau, the oblate of St. Germain des Prés, who left behind a history of the Order and also a history of Eastern monachism? There is no reason for thinking that the Solesmes Congregation would be more narrowminded or more stick-in-the-mud than its ancestor, St. Maur. But it, owing to difficulties that may be created by its exile, the Congregation were chary about claiming its heritage of Art, or if it were unable to provide from its staff a monk fitted to organize and direct the oblates, plainly then the only course would be to proceed without its help.

"After all, when one thinks it over, the oblates, such as I imagine them, might come into being and grow without the help of its monasteries, if it had at its head a priest fond of mysticism and of the Liturgy, eloquent enough to explain them and their bearings to his hearers, and, above all, of so saintly a character that his direction would never be called in question but would be accepted without a murmur by all.

"He might also affiliate himself as an oblate to some French or foreign Benedictine monastery, and occasional help from a monk would then be sufficient to teach Psalmody, deportment and chanting, so as to imprint on the oblates, at the very outset, the special monastic stamp of the Order.

"It is not there that the difficulty lies, but in the choice of the priest who, in default of a monk, is to be entrusted with the steering of the ship. Well, the Almighty will certainly provide one if He desires that a place in His Church should be filled which has remained empty for centuries.

"For the odd thing is that work of every kind is being undertaken, save that of Art, for God’s sake. The various Congregations share among themselves the other branches of labour, except that only one.

"The Jesuits, Franciscans, Redemptorists, Dominicans and others preach, give missions and retreats; others keep schools; others, like the Sulpiciens and the Lazaristes manage seminaries. Others, again, take care of the sick, or, like the Carthusians and the Cistercians, make reparation for the evil and sin that is in the world; finally, others, like the Benedictines of the Congregation of France, devote themselves especially to the service of the Liturgy and to praising God.

"But not. one of these Congregations — not even the Benedictines to whom it belongs by right — has sought to revive the succession of religious art, that, with the passing of Clony, seems to have fallen into abeyance."

"Yes, I know," continued Durtal after a pause, as he proceeded to roll a cigarette, "people will say: ’Of what use is Art? is it not superfluous, something like dessert after dinner?’ Still, why shouldn’t we offer this to Christ? Since the Reformation, and even earlier, they deprived Him of this; would it not be fitting to give it Him again?

"After all, if one looks at it even from a merely practical point of view, it would show great ignorance to deny the power of Art. In the Middle Ages, mysticism and the Liturgy relied upon Art as their surest auxiliary; in those days Art was the favourite daughter of the Church, her interpreter, charged with the expression of her thoughts and with their revelations in Cathedral porches and altar-screens.

"It was Art that brought the Gospel home to the massses and lit the flame of their enthusiasm; it was Art that made them kneel in joyful prayer at the foot of the crib or caused them to sob at the sight of the weeping groups on the Calvaries; Art again, which, on Easter Day made them ecstatically adore the newly-risen Christ leaning on His gardener’s spade and smiling at Magdalene; or, which, on Ascension Day, made them hail with joy their Saviour as He ascended Heavenwards with His pierced Hand raised to bless them.

"But how far off all this seems! Alas how forsaken, how bloodless the Church is since she lost her interest in Art, and since Art knows her no more. She has lost her best form of propaganda, her surest means of defence. Now that she is assailed on every side, surely she ought to implore the Almighty to send her artists whose works would certainly bring about more conversions and earn her more support than the empty old songs which her priests in their pulpits din into the ears of their long-suffering congregations.

"Religious art, dead though it be, can be revived; and, if Benedictine oblates have a mission, it is to create it anew and bring it to a high level.

"It goes without saying, that, to succeed, certain conditions are called for. First of all we may take it that such a scheme has the sanction of the Most High; on the human side, it is also clear that only in Paris or its neighbourhood would an institution of this character have any hope of succeeding, for the men of letters, scholars, historians, draughtsmen, painters, sculptors and architects, who would take up their abode in the oblates’ houses, would have to be in touch with the publishers and merchants and to be near to the great libraries and museums. Life would also have to be so arranged that each could attend to his own business and be free to work, without his day being continually broken by the Office. The order of the day would be easy to fix up: — Prayer and Mass early in the morning, then free-time till vespers at five or six p.m. for those who are able to attend and, finally, Compline for everybody in the evening.

"Yet I am not blind to the fact, that, just because such a work is a work of reformation, it may well incur general hatred; yet, though it be scoffed at and misrepresented, I cannot but believe that it will one day come into being, for there can be no doubt that there is room for such a work; so many people are waiting for it, longing for it; people who, by reason of their occupation, or state of health, or way of life, cannot actually enter monastic institutions; hence God will surely establish a haven of mercy, a port of anchorage for souls who long for a quasi-monastic life, who yearn to live apart from the world, and to work near Him and for Him, in peace.

"These are but day-dreams," said Durtal to himself, as, looking at his watch, he turned his steps towards the station; "this is scarcely the time, I must confess, to think of founding such a home of common life, when the Chambers are madly bent on exterminating all religious brotherhoods and all the Orders.

"And yet," he continued, "its very inopportuneness makes it, in away, opportune. Just think it out: I am more and more convinced that the Communities Bill will not be repealed for many a year. What then becomes of the Benedictines when banished from France? Will they have sufficient spiritual stamina to endure such exile? I hope so. Will they be able to find recruits abroad where other abbeys of the same Order already exist? I doubt it. Even supposing that they do not die out for lack of resources, the Houses of the Solesmes Congregation will be condemned to vegetate without any hope of making progress, and, finally, to die a natural death. In any case, the is bound to disappear from France, unless by some underhand means we contrive to keep it alive. Such an expedient, such underhand means, can be found in the institution of oblates. But I wonder, will the Benedictines, for the honour of their Patriarch, adopt this last resource?

"I hope so; moreover, I cannot see that the Government has power to oppose such a scheme. No law can prevent artists from hiring quarters in a settlement fitted up for the purpose, nor from living there as they please, nor from meeting there at certain times to discuss Art, or to pray — in a word, from doing just what they like. They are not priests, they have a recognized civil profession, they are bound by no vow, nor have they any outward monastic dress, as they wear the great scapular underneath their garments. Such an association would fall under the category of literary societies, for which no preliminary authorization is required.

"One of the lodgers might even offer hospitality to a monk, dressed, if need be, as a secular priest, for law there is none to forbid a man entertaining a friend; and in such wise the institution would be fairly launched.

"While wishing that such fair dreams may be realized, I agree with M. Lampre in hoping that our Abbot will have some of his monks here. Of course, it will be very dismal; it will he a meagre Office that we shall hear, but, at any rate, as long as Mass and Vespers are chanted every day, we oblates will manage to pull along. Besides, I have no other choice," he sighed as he got into the train, "unless I leave Val-des-Saints, which only means returning to Paris, and that is a place to which I don’t want to go."