et apart for the use of each of the brothers.
What the viands might be which were to fill the trenchers, I do not
know; but the smell was not inviting, so we quitted the hall, and
following our guide up stairs, were introduced into a cell. Its
appearance entirely overthrew the theories which my young companion had
nourished. A small, but neatly-furnished apartment, with a clean bed, a
chest of drawers, and a quantity of flowers on the window-sill, by no
means came up to the ideas which he had entertained of monastic
asceticism; and when, over and above all this, he found more than a
breviary and a crucifix within reach, namely, a sort of pocket-library
and a lute, his astonishment found vent in words.

"Are monks allowed to indulge their taste for music?" asked he.

"Oh yes," was the reply; "Brother Franz is a great musician. It is he
that always leads in the chanted grace before and after meals."

Brother Franz, however, was not present to answer for himself; so we
continued our progress.

We desired to see the chapel; and as we approached it by a back stair,
the notes of the organ that swelled along the passage, gave indication
that some service was going on. We entered a gallery, whence, from
behind the shelter of a screen, we could look down upon the chapel, and
those that filled it. The congregation was both numerous and devout,
and in the body of the pile, all were engaged in singing a requiem for
a departed soul. On a bier in the middle aisle, stood a coffin, having
a skull and cross-bones laid upon the pall, and over it hung a priest,
whose gestures sufficiently indicated, that for the tenant of that
narrow chamber he was supplicating. "This is some recent death?"
demanded I; "some person of note is gone to his account, and you are
praying that his sins may be pardoned?"

"No, sir," answered the monk, "the individual whose demise we this day
commemorate, gave up the ghost an hundred years ago; but we are still
bound to say masses for her soul. She has bequeathed property to secure
this for ever."

"And is her body in that coffin?" demanded I.

"Not at all," was the answer; "these are but representations of what
you take them for. That is not a coffin, neither are these a skull and
cross-bones."

I could not help smiling, when this avowal was made with such perfect
simplicity; and I went away surprised, that any such awkward endeavour
to work upon the sympathies of the people, should be considered
judic