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Updated: June 24, 2025
I thought in the great silence of the Trappists there would be more room for prayer. When I left my home and went to El-Largani I took with me one treasure only. Domini, it was the little wooden crucifix you pinned upon the tent at Arba. My mother gave it to me, and I was allowed to keep it. Everything else in the way of earthly possessions I, of course, had to give up.
But they came to the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross towards the desert like a weapon. And she looked at it and saw the Christ. "Boris," she whispered, "there is the Christ. Let us think only of that tonight." She saw him look at it steadily. "You remember," she said, at the bottom of the avenue of cypresses "at El-Largani Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis?" "Yes, Domini."
I told you she was the passion of my life. And yet I hardly felt sad at parting from her. Perhaps that will show you how I was then. It seemed to me that we should be even closer together when I wore the monk's habit. I was in haste to put it on. I went to the monastery of El-Largani and entered it as a novice of the Trappistine order.
The hautboy was barbarous and provocative, but she thought that it was no more shrill with a persistent triumph. Presently the church bell chimed again. Was it the bell of the church of Beni-Mora, or the bell of the chapel of El-Largani? Or was it not rather the voice of the great religion to which she belonged, to which Androvsky was returning?
Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a pedestal of stone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive trees. It marked the beginning of the domain of El-Largani. When Domini saw it she looked at Androvsky, and his eyes answered her silent question. The coachman whipped his horses into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach his destination.
The Pere Michel, who was my predecessor, had some doves, and had left them behind in a little house by my bench. I took care of and fed them. They were tame, and used to flutter to my shoulders and perch on my hands. To birds and animals I was always a friend. At El-Largani there are all sorts of beasts, and, at one time or another, it had been my duty to look after most of them.
We had no time allowed us for sitting and being sad. Domini, I don't want to tell you about the Trappists, their life only about myself, why I was as I was, how I came to change. For years I was not unhappy at El-Largani. When my time of novitiate was over I took the eternal vows without hesitation. Many novices go out again into the world. It never occurred to me to do so.
He was a good man, but, I think, apt to misunderstand men. The Abbe of a Trappist monastery has complete power over his community. He can order what he will. Soon after he came to El-Largani for some reason that I cannot divine he removed the Pere Michel, who had been for years in charge of the cemetery, from his duties there, and informed me that I was to undertake them.
"It was invented by a Trappist monk of the monastery of El-Largani, who disappeared from the monastery. He had taken the final vows. He had been there for over twenty years." "He he disappeared did the priest say?" "Yes." "Where?" "I don't think I am sure he doesn't know. But what does it matter? The awful thing is that he should leave the monastery after taking the eternal vows vows made to God."
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