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But, alas! the continual use of it produced an effect far more powerful than had been contemplated by the worthy itinerant monk who had recommended it, for the poor cenobites were so stimulated by its aphrodisiacal virtues that, transgressing alike their monastic wall and vows, they sought relief for their amorous desires in the fond embraces of the women residing in the neighbourhood.
"At the present day, as I have just said, all the Trappists form only one and the same institute 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 cenobites of the Middle Ages." "But if you have visited these ascetics," said Durtal, "you must know Dom Etienne?"
Now, however perfect these cenobites may be, they remain none the less men; or, to express it otherwise, sympathy and antipathy live in constant and compulsory friction; with very restricted subjects of discussion, living in complete ignorance of all that is going on outside, conversation must degenerate into chatter; at last the only interest of life centres in trivialities, in petty questions which in such an atmosphere assume the importance of events.
Anthony, father of a great number of Cenobites, left his monastery, and followed at Alexandria certain confessors of the faith; he attended upon them in prison, and exhorted them under torment to procure for himself the palm of martyrdom. St. Dominic, animated by a similar spirit, had formed the intention of going among the Saracens, only two years after the institution of his order.
His body was carried down the mountain to Antioch. Heading the solemn procession were the patriarch, six bishops, twenty-one counts and six thousand soldiers, "and Antioch," says Gibbon, "revered his bones as her glorious ornament and impregnable defence." The Cenobites of the East We cannot linger with these hermits. We go back in years and return to Egypt.
Altars arose and sacred shrines, and delicate chantries and fretted spires; now the flashing phantom of heavenly choirs, and then the dim response of cowled and earthly cenobites: "These are black Vesper's pageants!" Lothair was quite glad to see Mr. Putney Giles. That gentleman indeed was a universal favorite.
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