ried
him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual
chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated
belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has
gone to God.

At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the
gallery to hear compline and Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians
bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances
which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public
offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the
surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed
chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded
and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the
sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant
beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over
and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised
that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and
stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night.

But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton's
memoirs--a dull work--the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines
(for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods)
disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it
seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon
the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in
life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted
labours of their day. The dead in life--there was a chill reflection.
And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the
best of our mixed existence:

'Que t'as de belles filles,
Girofle!
Girofla!
Que t'as de belles filles,
L'Amour let comptera!'

And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to
love.

THE BOARDERS

But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows. At
this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I was not alone in
the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with
a small dining-room on the ground-floor and a whole corridor of cells
similar to mine upstairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a
regular retraitant; but it was somewhere between three