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I was a monk with monks, close pent within The cloister's precincts, when I first began To waken to a consciousness of self. My impetuous spirit chafed against the bars, And the high blood of princes began to course In strange unbidden moods along my veins.

We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses, where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time. How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already.

It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave records it with no ordinary significance of language. Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun the ruling power: the brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.

Now, between the slender columns, boards have been placed which shut out light and sun. The traveller sat down on an old wheel-barrow, waiting till he could see in the dim and misty light. All around him was forgetfulness of the Cloister's holy uses; signs of desecration and neglect.

The Rhine's gay stream has a gory gleam, The cloister's nests are robbed by roysters; The church-lands now are changed to lurch-lands; Abbacies, and all other holy foundations Now are but robber-sees rogues' habitations. And thus is each once-blest German state, Deep sunk in the gloom of the desolate! Whence comes all this?

Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven!"

He smiles and nods as he hears how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's "Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke." We see Vadstene cloister's library, in thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit out of the dead letters.

Thus he left the quiet cloister's shade, joyful in spirit and richly laden with blessings, to enter on his noble career.

After the richness of the portal's carving, the interior of Saint-Trophime is to them "far too plain;" in futile comparison with the Cloister's grace, it is found "too severe;" and one author has written that only "when the refulgence of a Mediterranean sun glances through a series of long lances, ... then and then only does the Cathedral of Saint-Trophime offer any inducement to linger within its non-impressive walls."

And at last the full bitterness of penitence and regret overtook me when I reflected that by my own act I had rendered myself for ever unworthy of the cloister's benign shelter. I went blindly through the tangle of undergrowth, stumbling at every step and scarce noticing that I stumbled; and in this fashion I came presently back to my mule.