"Yes, do you know their convent?"

And as Durtal shook his head, the abbe continued,--

"It is older, but less interesting than that in the Rue Monsieur, the chapel is mean, full of plaster statuettes, cotton flowers, bunches of grapes and ears of corn in gold paper, but the old building of the nunnery is curious. It contains, what shall I call it? a school dining-room, and a retreatant's drawing-room, and so gives at once the impression of old age and childhood."

"I know that cla.s.s of convents," said Durtal. "I used often to see one, when I used to visit an old aunt at Versailles. It always used to impress me as a Maison Vauquer, brought to devotional uses, it had the air at once of a _table d'hote_ in the Rue de la Clef and the sacristy of a country church."

"Just so," and the abbe went on with a smile,--

"I had many interviews with the abbess in the Rue Tournefort; you guess at rather than see her, for you are separated from her by a screen of black wood, behind which is stretched a black curtain which she draws aside."

"I can see it," thought Durtal, who, remembering the Benedictine custom, saw in a second a little face confused in neutral tinted light, and lower, at the top of her habit, the gleam of a medal of the Blessed Sacrament in red enamelled in white.

He laughed and said to the abbe,--

"I laugh, because having had some business to transact with my nun aunt of whom I was speaking, only visible like your abbess through a trellis, I found out how to read her thoughts a little."

"Ah! how was that?"

"In this way. Since I could not see her face, which was hidden behind the lattice of her cage, and disappeared behind her veil, and if she should answer me, having nothing to guide me but the inflexions of her voice, always circ.u.mspect and always calm, I ended by trusting only to her great gla.s.ses, round, with buff frames, which almost all nuns wear.

Well, all the repressed vivacity of this woman burst out there; suddenly in a corner of her gla.s.ses, there was a glimmer, and I then understood that her eye had lighted up, and gave the lie to the indifference of her voice, the determined quietness of her tone."

The abbe in his turn began to laugh.

"Do you know the Superior of the Benedictines, in the Rue Monsieur?"

said Durtal.

"I have spoken with her once or twice; there the parlour is monastic, there is not the provincial and middle-cla.s.s side of the Rue Tournefort, it is composed of a sombre room, of which all the breadth at the end is taken up by an iron grating, and behind the grating are again wooden bars, and a shutter painted black. You are quite in the dark, and the abbess, scarcely in the light, appears to you like a phantom."

"The abbess is, I suppose, the nun, elderly, fragile and very short, to whom Dom Etienne committed the novice?"

"Yes. She is a remarkable shepherdess of souls, and what is more, a very well educated woman of most distinguished manners."

"Oh," thought Durtal: "I can imagine that these abbesses are charming, but also terrible women. Saint Teresa was goodness itself, but when she speaks in her 'Way of Perfection' of nuns who band themselves together to discuss the will of their mother, she shows herself inexorable, for she declares that perpetual imprisonment should be inflicted on them as soon as possible and without flinching, and in fact she is right, for every disorderly sister infects the flock, and gives the rot to souls."

Thus talking they had reached the end of the Rue de Sevres, and the abbe stopped to rest.

"Ah," he said, as if speaking to himself, "had I not had all my life heavy expenses, first a brother, then nephews to maintain, I should many years ago have become a member of Saint Benedict's family. I have always had an attraction towards that grand Order, which is, in fact, the intellectual Order of the Church. Therefore, when I was stronger and younger, I always went for my retreats to one of their monasteries, sometimes to the black monks of Solesmes, or of Liguge, who have preserved the wise traditions of Saint Maurus, sometimes to the Cistercians, or the white monks of La Trappe."

"True," said Durtal, "La Trappe is one of the great branches of the tree of Saint Benedict, but how is it that its ordinances do not differ from those which the Patriarch left?"

"That is to say that the Trappists interpret the rule of Saint Benedict, which is very broad and supple, less in its spirit than in its letter, while the Benedictines do the contrary.

"In fact, La Trappe is an offshoot of Citeaux, and is much more the daughter of Saint Bernard, who was during forty years the very sap of that branch, than the descendant of Saint Benedict."

"But, so far as I remember, the Trappists are themselves divided, and do not live under a uniform discipline."

"They do so now, since a pontifical brief dated March 17th, 1893, sanctioned the decisions of the general Chapter of the Trappists a.s.sembled in Rome, and ordered the fusion into one sole order, and under the direction of a sole superior, of the three observances of the Trappists, who were in fact ruled by discordant const.i.tutions."

And seeing that Durtal was listening attentively, the abbe continued,--

"Among these three observances, one only, that of the Cistercian Trappists, to which belonged the abbey of which I was a guest, followed in their integrity the rules of the twelfth century, and led the monastic life of Saint Bernard's day. This alone recognized the rule of Saint Benedict, taken in its strictest application, and completed by the Charte de Charite, and the use and customs of Citeaux; the two others had adopted the same rule, but revised and modified in the seventeenth century by the Abbe de Rance, and again one of them, the Belgian congregation, had changed the statutes imposed by that abbot.

"At the present day, as I have just said, all the Trappists form only one and the same inst.i.tute under the name, Order of Reformed Cistercians of the Blessed Virgin Mary of La Trappe, and all resume the rules of Citeaux, and live again the life of the cen.o.bites of the Middle Ages."

"But if you have visited these ascetics," said Durtal, "you must know Dom Etienne?"

"No, I have never stayed at La Grande Trappe, I prefer the poor and small monasteries where one is mixed up with the monks, to those imposing convents where they isolate you in a guest-house, and in a word keep you separate.

"There is one in which I make my retreats, Notre Dame de l'Atre, a small Trappist monastery a few leagues from Paris, which is quite the most seductive of shelters. Besides that the Lord really abides there, for it has true saints among its children, it is delightful also with its ponds, its immemorial trees, its distant solitude, far in the woods."

"Yes, but," observed Durtal, "the life there must be unbending, for La Trappe is the most rigid order which has been imposed on men."

For his only answer the abbe let go Durtal's arm, and took both his hands.

"Do you know," he said, looking him in the face, "it is there you must go for your conversion?"

"Are you serious, Monsieur l'Abbe?"

And as the priest pressed his hands more strongly Durtal cried,--

"Ah, no indeed, first I have not the stoutness of soul, and if that be possible I have still less the bodily health needed for such a course, I should fall ill on my arrival, and then ... and then...."

"And then, what? I am not proposing to you to shut you up for ever in a cloister."

"So I suppose," said Durtal, in a somewhat piqued tone.

"But just to remain a week, just the necessary time for a cure. Now a week is soon over, then do you think that if you make such a resolution G.o.d will not sustain you?"

"That is all very fine, but ..."

"Let us speak on the health question, then;" and the abbe smiled a smile of pity that was a little contemptuous.

"I can promise you at once that as a retreatant, you will not be bound to lead the life of a Trappist in its austerest sense. You need not get up at two in the morning for Matins, but at three, or even at four o'clock, according to the day."

And smiling at the face Durtal made, the abbe went on,--

"As to your food it will be better than that of the monks; naturally you will have no fish nor meat, but you may certainly have an egg for dinner, if vegetables are not enough for you."

"And the vegetables, I suppose, are cooked with salt and water, and no seasoning?"

"No, they are dressed with salt and water only on fasting days; at other times you will have them cooked in milk and water, or in oil."

"Many thanks," said Durtal.

"But all that is excellent for your health," continued the priest, "you complain of pains in the stomach, sick headaches, diarrhoea, well, this diet, in the country, in the air, will cure you better than all the drugs you take.

"Now let us leave, if you like, your body out of the question, for in such a case, it is G.o.d's part to act against your weakness. I tell you, you will not be ill at La Trappe, that were absurd; it would be to send the penitent sinner away, and Jesus would not then be the Christ; but let us talk of your soul. Have the courage to take its measure, to look it well in the face. Do you see that?" said the abbe after a silence.