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"I think it most interesting to visit, both from the monastic and from the artistic point of view. Solesmes is a great convent, the parent House of the Benedictine Order in France, and it has a flourishing school of novices. What is it that you want to know, exactly?" "Why, everything you can tell me."
Their chapel was redolent of Louis XIV., at once childish and pompous, too much bedizened with gold, and the floor too shiny with wax; but there was an interesting detail: at the entrance large panes of glass had been substituted for the walls, so that in winter the sick, sitting in a warm room, could look through the glass partition and follow the services and hear the plain song of Solesmes which the Sisters had the good taste to use.
When his time of probation was passed, he decided to enter a convent at Solesmes, and by submitting himself to convent rules, make sure of his vocation. But before making any final choice, we find from his letters that "if France were invaded," he claimed "the right to do his duty as a citizen and a son." He entered the convent at Solesmes, first as a postulant, then as a novice.
By going to Solesmes I shall complete my education; I shall see and hear the most perfect expression of that Liturgy and that Gregorian chant of which the little convent of Notre Dame de l'Atre, by reason of the limited number of the Brethren, could only afford a reduced copy very faithful, it is true, but yet reduced.
Well, you feel a buzzing in your brain, and just as you hear a great noise of falling waters you lose consciousness. That is what I am feeling; only the experience is not in my brain, but in my soul, which is giddy and helpless, on the point of fainting away." "I should like to think," said the Abbé Plomb, "that it is not the thought of a visit to Solesmes that has thus upset you."
The men of the 42nd Division have every reason to be proud of their battle at Solesmes; the Germans were very strongly entrenched and they were picked troops, and a night attack is, of course, one of the most difficult of all to carry out successfully. The observers were instructed to remain at their quarters in Beauvois, and for the next eleven days training was resumed.
It is, in fact, an epitome of doctrine, the essential extract of her teaching, and was more especially intended for those of her daughters who are unable to have the benefit of her instruction and lectures, because they live away from Solesmes, in other convents that she has founded.
"It is not with us that you ought to hear them; our choirs are too restricted, too weak to be able to raise the giant mass of those chants. You ought to go to the black monks of Solesmes or Ligugé if you wish to find the Gregorian melodies executed as they were in the Middle Ages. By the way, do you know in Paris, the Benedictine nuns in the Rue Monsieur?"
"I am going to Solesmes again a week hence, and I told the Reverend Father Abbot that I should take you with me." Then, seeing Durtal's amazement, he smiled. "But I will not leave you there," he went on, "unless you wish not to return to Chartres.
As you see, there is time for meditation and work in the intervals between the canonical hours and meals." "And the oblates?" "What oblates? I saw none at Solesmes." "Indeed then if there are any, do they lead the same life as the Fathers?" "Evidently; excepting, perhaps, some dispensations depending on the Abbot's favour.
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