United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Ah, good fellows," he thought, "for they helped me this morning, it is to them I owe it that I could keep silence no longer, and was able to pray, to have at last known the joy of supplication which at Paris was only a snare for me! to them, and above all to Our Lady de l'Atre, who had pity on my poor soul."
Durtal rejoined M. Bruno in the court; they shook hands, and the oblate announced the presence of a new guest. "A retreatant?" "No; a curate from the neighbourhood of Lyons, he has come to see the abbot, who is ill." "But I thought the abbot of Notre Dame de l'Atre was the tall monk who led the office?"
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.
"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.
Trappists were brought here from Sainte Marie de la Mer, in the diocese of Toulouse, and this small colony has made Notre-Dame de l'Atre the Cistercian nursery you see. "Such, in few words, is the history of the convent," said the oblate. "As for the ruins they are buried underground, and no doubt precious fragments might be discovered, but for want of money and men no excavations have been made.
"Then become an oblate; go to join Monsieur Bruno at Notre Dame de l'Atre." "No, indeed, not that, at any rate. To be an oblate at La Trappe is the same thing as remaining at Chartres! It is a mere half-measure. Monsieur Bruno will always remain a boarder; he will never be a monk. He gets all the disadvantages of the cloister, and none of the benefits."
"The property of the abbey was then immense; it comprised all the country which surrounds us, kept up several lazar houses in the neighbourhood, and was the home of more than three hundred monks. Unfortunately what happened to others happened to Notre-Dame de l'Atre.
"By the way," said the oblate, "come and salute that Notre Dame de l'Atre, of which I have spoken to you, found among the remains of the old cloister." They rose from table, passed along a corridor, and struck into a lateral gallery, at the end of which they stopped before a statue of life size, in stone.
But then there passed in him an incomprehensible fact: his whole soul revolted at this idea, and the formal order not to deceive himself was truly breathed into him, and he said to himself: "No, the bitter draught must be drained to the last drop, it is all or nothing; if I confess to the abbé it will be in disobedience to absolute and secret directions; I should be capable of not going afterwards to Notre Dame de l'Atre.
Since his return from Notre Dame de l'Atre his friendship with the Abbé had become much closer, altogether intimate. He knew now the inner man of this priest, who, in the midst of modern surroundings, led a purely mediæval life. Formerly, when he rang at his bell, he had paid no heed to the housekeeper, an old woman, who curtsied to him without a word when she opened the door.
Word Of The Day