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There the magister would find at least a piece of bread, some salt and warmed mead. Judge Combers' wife was easy and bounteous: but old John Badge's daughter was a fair and dainty morsel. He licked his full lips, leered to one side, muttered, 'A curse on all lords' porters, and made for John Badge's wicket. Badge's dwelling had been part of the monastery's curing house.
I asked to see the cemetery, and was led to an uncultivated spot a little beyond the block of convent buildings. A small grassy enclosure, with a wooden paling round it, was the monks' burying-place. About twelve had died in the twenty-five years of the monastery's existence, but most of the graves looked recent.
Luckily Father Burrowes came back the following week, and Mark's deepening impression of the monastery's futility was temporarily obliterated by the exciting news that the Bishop of Alberta whom the brethren were taught to reverence as a second founder would be the guest of the Order on St. Lawrence's day and attend the profession of Brother Anselm.
The priests of Hiei-zan received them with open arms, and they occupied on the monastery's commanding site, a position well-nigh impregnable, from which they constantly menaced the capital. It was now the commencement of winter.
This sent Odo in a cheerful mood to the red-hung windows, whence, peering between the folds of his aunts' gala habits, he admired the great court enclosed in nobly-ordered cloisters and strewn with fresh herbs and flowers. Thence one of the rector's chaplains conducted them to the church, placing them, in company with the monastery's other noble guests, in a tribune constructed above the choir.
There, spare, but with his withered form erect, and his head slightly tilted, he had been gazing at the Crucifix with a radiant smile, and moving his thin lips in a sort of whispered, confidential, friendly conversation with the Saviour. Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the workmen's barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery's guest-chamber.
Though he no longer owned the land, he still enjoyed its products and had only to pay a trifling sum each year in recognition of the monastery's ownership. The use, or usufruct, of the land which was thus granted by the monastery to its former owner was called a beneficium.
Another favourite diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which enabled relatives of nobles and all those whom it was desirable to placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and bloody barons, to become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way responsible for the monastery's welfare.
Michael the Archangel where the latter is lurking behind a screen of old red spruces of which the denseness seems to prop the very heavens, and which on clear, sunny days can be seen rising to mark the spot whence the monastery's crosses, like the gilded birds of the forest of eternal silence, scintillate a constant welcome.
"Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of chastened enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and inhale this restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it be if I were to let everything go to the devil, and take up my abode here for ever?" At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of the monastery's bell as it struck the hour.
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