ntempt. She had come to the place
with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome
to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth
pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian
saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and
between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries
continually since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her
the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited as to
show the world that their life was aloof from its "idle business." By
some such phrase, at least, the friar would assuredly have attempted to
include her in any spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have
asked of her the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the
Salvation Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making
such a fool of one's self!"

The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran's
ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As a pocket
it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the local white wine
made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this house by the West, is
carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger at the gates. The
friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and
not only to make, but also to toss them. Those who chanced to be in the
room stood prudently aside, and the brother tossed boldly. But that was
the last that was seen of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in _La_
_Legende des Siecles_ of disappearance as the thing which no creature
is able to achieve: here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by
quite an ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was
an end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake
from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the
spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to
meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was
explained.

Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up
gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy
or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found
but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome
the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the
habit of sacrificing sleep. What ar