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Those men in red robes, as pale and stern and implacable as the Council of Ten at Venice; those ghosts of women decked with flowers, who, by the dim light of the tapers, looked like mere reflections of life hovering in the galleries above the priests of death; the muskets of the guard glittering in the gloom in the back of the court; the heart-broken attitude of my poor sergeant, who had fallen at my feet; the silent but vast delight of the Trappist, still standing unwearied near the bar; the mournful note of some convent bell in the neighbourhood beginning to ring for matins amid the silence of the assembly was not all this enough to touch the nerves of the wives of the farmers-general and to send a thrill through the brawny breasts of the tanners in the body of the court?
Still another interesting group of transfers are the different gesture languages, developed for the use of deaf-mutes, of Trappist monks vowed to perpetual silence, or of communicating parties that are within seeing distance of each other but are out of earshot.
If we button-hole Jean Kostka, and ask him to tell us confidentially and upon honour what it is that has changed his views, making him discover the leer of Baal-Zeboub where he once saw the smile of the spiritual Eos, he turns Trappist at once, and goes into retreat with M. Huysman; there is not a syllable of information in all his beau volume as to any intellectual process through which he passed on the way, and I suspect that his conversion partook of the nature of a "penetration," to speak his own language, and was not an intellectual operation, but a sudden volte face.
And the blood of Augustus, so proud of purpling in the sunlight, so fired by the passion for sovereign dominion, seemed for a moment to disappear, as if, indeed, the new world had sucked it up in the depths of its gloomy sepulchres. However, the Trappist insisted on showing the ladies the steps of Diocletian, and began to tell them the legend. "Yes," said he, "it was a miracle.
At times, wearied out with himself, he seems to have felt the need of retreat and quiet; but he was almost as constitutionally incapable of keeping still, as certain modern statesmen in their retirement from public life. We smile when we hear him in the violent first fervour of his conversion, talking about becoming a Trappist, and, later, a Jesuit.
Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen.
Smoke and flame encircled them, for one moment more their figures were seen like black specks in the wreathing columns of fire for one moment more the music of the organ thundered through the chapel, then came a terrific crash a roar of the victorious flames as they sprang up high to the roof of the building, and then then nothing but a crimson glare on the Campagna, seen for miles and miles around, and afterwards described to the world by the world's press as the "Burning Down of a Trappist Monastery" in which no lives had been lost save those of one Fra Ambrosio, long insane, who was supposed to have kindled the destructive blaze in a fit of mania, and of a stranger, sick of malarial fever, whom the monks had sheltered, name unknown.
When I greet him on the hills of heaven, he will not be sorry to be told that among the many in the far West to whom he was helpful was the writer of this too imperfect Sketch. Sanders. He belonged to the Church militant. In looks he was a cross between a grenadier and a Trappist. But there was more soldier than monk in his nature.
Victor Dorn's system was as perfect as it was simple, and he held himself to it as rigidly as the father superior of a Trappist monastery holds his monks to their routine. Also, Victor had learned to know and to be on guard against those two arch-enemies of the man who wishes to "get somewhere" self-excuse and optimism. He had got a good strong leash upon his vanity and a muzzle, too.
At the head of six hundred dragoons, the King hastened to the convent and at once rescued the prior, sending the good old monks of Sainte Amandine to Citeaux, and dispersing the rebellious young ones among the Carthusian and Trappist monasteries. All the treasures contained in the chapel he had transferred to his camp, until a calmer, more propitious season.
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