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"You can stay here if you choose," observed my companion, as our mules drank out of the fountain basin in the courtyard. "Inside the big doorway yonder is written up 'Silencio' and 'Vir prudens tacebit, but the monks are not overstrict, and, like the Archduke at Miramar, they offer free hospitality to all wayfarers.
The great Claustro do Silencio at Alcobaça was, as an inscription tells, begun in the year 1310, when on April 13th the first stone was laid by the abbot in the presence of the master builder Domingo Domingues.
This done, he separates from them, as he walks away, speaking back in a whisper: "Keep your ground, young masters, till I return to you, and if you can help it, don't let the horses make any noise, or budge an inch. For yourselves, silencio!"
If you wish it, however, we shall probably call in the gentleman after dinner to have a quiz with him; it may relieve us. I can promise you a glass of wine, too, and that's another reason why we should keep him aloof until the punch comes. The wine's always a sub silencio affair, and, may heaven pity me, I get growling enough from old Bruin on other subjects."
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