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At the top of the stairs M. Bruno, with a large apron round him, was getting ready to clean the steps. Durtal looked on him with surprise. The oblate smiled and shook hands with him. "This is an excellent task for the soul," he said, showing his broom; "it recalls modest sentiments which one is too inclined to forget after living in the world."
In the same year, on the night of the Assumption of the Blessed and Glorious Virgin Mary, and after the Te Deum had been sung, died the devout Laic, Nicholas Bodiken, who was an Oblate of our House. He served Christ faithfully, and showed special devotion in singing the praises of the Most Blessed Virgin.
You will allow me, father?..." The monk acquiesced by a sign. "Then if you will come with me," replied the oblate, addressing Durtal, "I will hand it you without delay." They went upstairs together, and Durtal then learnt that M. Bruno lived in a room at the bottom of a small corridor, not far from his own.
Scientific cosmogony dates from the telescopic discovery made by Cassini an Italian astronomer, under whose care Louis XIV. placed the Observatory of Paris that the planet Jupiter is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles.
"Then it is a monk," he said, astounded; and, mechanically, he turned towards the statue of the Virgin, summoning the oblate by a hasty glance, who came to sit beside him. "Who is he?" "Dom Anselm, the abbot of the monastery." "He who was ill?" "Yes, he will give us communion." Durtal fell upon his knees, suffocated, almost trembling: he was not dreaming!
"Saint Hildegarde is, with Saint Bernard, one of the purest glories of the family of Saint Benedict. How predestinate was that virgin, who was inundated with interior light at the age of three, and died at eighty-two, having lived all her life in the cloister!" "And add that she was as a permanent state, prophetical!" cried the oblate.
And the oblate added, "You can tell them, when you go back to Paris, that you have seen a real saint, such as existed in the eleventh century; he carries us back to the time of St. Francis of Assisi; he is in some sense the reincarnation of that astonishing Juniper whose innocent exploits the Fioretti celebrate for us. You know that work?"
Durtal pressed the hands of the guest-master and the oblate for the last time, when the Father abbot came in his turn to wish him a safe journey; and at the end of the court Durtal perceived two eyes fixed on him, those of Brother Anacletus, who, at a distance, said adieu by a slight bow, but without other gesture.
Massive, built up, as it were, in the Roman style, they draped themselves in the colour, glowing and dull, which clothes, in fact, the offices of La Trappe. "Well," said the oblate, when, after the ceremony, they sat at the table of the refectory; "well, what do you think of our High Mass?" "It is superb," answered Durtal.
"And do you know this?" continued the oblate; the volume he offered was called "On Prayer," was anonymous, and bore at the bottom of its first page "Solesmes, printed at the Abbey of Saint Cecilia," and above the printed date, 1886, Durtal made out the word written in ink, "Confidential." "I have never seen this little book, which seems moreover to have never been brought into the market.
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