Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

by Edward Harrison Barker

When we entered, two men were seated at the table eating bread and cheese and drinking home-brewed beer. One was quite young, perhaps five-and-twenty, and it was to him that the brother who parleyed with the outer world at the gate introduced me, with the recommendation that he should do all in his power for me, adding, with an emphasis by which he gained my friendship for ever: 'Je réponds sur vous.' The young man said that as soon as he had finished his own meal he would see to my supper. I begged him to take his time, as I was in no hurry.

The good porter, still solicitous, asked where I was going to sleep, and the young man, who I afterwards learnt was a postulant, pointed to a bed in one of the corners. I was then left with my two new acquaintances. The postulant had very soon finished, and having brushed the crumbs off his part of the bare board with his hand, he disappeared, to see what he could find for me in the kitchen. The man who remained also brought his meal to a close, but he did not whisk the crumbs away; he brushed them into little heaps, and, wetting his forefinger, raised them by this means to his mouth. He was about fifty; his chin was shaved, but he wore whiskers, and a long rusty overcoat hung nearly down to his heels. He was very quiet, and I thought he looked like a repentant cabman. There was something about the man that excited my curiosity, but I felt that, considering where I was, it would be very bad taste to put any leading questions to him respecting his history. I nevertheless found a way of getting into conversation with him, and he did not need much persuasion to talk. He was rather incoherent, but I gathered from what he said that he had wandered a good deal from monastery to monastery, now in the world and now almost 'in religion,' without finding anchorage anywhere.

'The world,' he said, 'is like a rotten plank, and we are like smoke that comes and goes. If we do not think of eternity, we are shipwrecked.'

Feeling, perhaps, that something in the world was a little more solid after the bread and cheese and beer than it was before, he was working himself up to a communicative humour, and I was beginning to hope that I should soon know what sort of a character he really was, when the return of the postulant changed his ideas as effectually as if a bucket of water had been thrown in his face. When he ventured to speak again, the younger man told him that it was six o'clock, and that the whole community was now expected to observe the rule of silence.

'Do not be angry,' he added, as he heard the other mutter something that escaped me.

'I am not angry,' replied the owner of the long coat as he glided softly out of the room.

I was now alone with the postulant, who made matters pleasanter for me by giving a generous interpretation to the rule of silence in so far as it applied to himself. He told me that, as I had come after the hour of the second meal, the frère cuisinier was not in the kitchen, but at salve; consequently there was no possibility of getting even an omelet made for me. After looking, however, into all the corners of the kitchen, my providential man had discovered some cold macaroni, which he presented to me in a small tin plate. I do not know how it had been cooked, but its very dark colour made me suspicious of it. Although I knew it was quite wholesome, I thought it safer to leave it untouched, and to be satisfied with bread and cheese. Now, this cheese, made by the Trappists of the Double upon the Port-Salut recipe, which is a secret of the Order, is of excellent quality, and deserves its reputation. The monastery bread, made from the wheat grown by the monks, was of the substantial and honest kind which in England would probably be called 'farmhouse bread,' although the great wheel or trencher-shaped loaves of the French provinces might cause some surprise there. My meal, therefore, might have been worse than it was, and as it was given to me for nothing, it would have been very bad manners not to appear pleased. The truth is, the novelty of my position—that of a tramp taken in and fed on charity—amused me so much that I found everything perfect. I had an idea 'at the back of the head' that I should find a way of squaring matters financially with the holy men, but I did not wish to tell it even to myself then. I must confess that when a black bottle was placed beside the bread and cheese on the bare table, I was weak enough to hope that it contained some of the excellent white wine which I was told the Trappists made; but when the liquor came out the colour of pea soup, I recognised the religious beer which had already disappointed me. As I could get nothing better, and the water being distinctly bad, the most sensible thing to do was to be reconciled to the beer, and in this I succeeded very fairly. Necessity is not the mother of invention only. The wine, I afterwards learnt, is only drunk at the convent in winter. Much of it is sold to priests for sacramental use.

When I had taken the keen edge off my hunger, I began to feel a fresh interest in the postulant. Somehow, he did not appear to me to be of the stuff out of which monks, especially Trappists, are made, although I know that in all that relates to the interior workings of a man there are no outward signs to be relied upon. There is puzzle enough in our own contradictions to discourage us from trying to find consistency in others; but we try all the same. We have a fine sense of proportion and harmony when we analyze our fellow-beings, but none whatever when we turn the faculty introspectively. The sanctimonious undertone in which this young man spoke struck me as being false, for there was nothing in him that I could discover which linked him to the ascetic ideal of life. But then the question arose, Why was he there? He was strong and healthy; he had a deep colour on his cheeks, and a humorous twinkle in his eye. He did not look as if he had been crossed in love, or had received any of the scars of passion such as might account for his wish to become a Trappist. He had seen something of the world. He had been to Chili, among other countries, and the war there had ruined his prospects, so he told me. I concluded, from what he said, that on his return to France he had sought a temporary refuge with the Trappists, and that he preferred to remain under the shelter that he had found there rather than run the risk of worse in the struggle for life outside. Becoming more confidential, he told me that what was most difficult to be borne by those in his position was the rule of absolute submission and obedience.

I had not been at the table long, when this postulant glided out of the room, saying:

'I will see if there is a way of getting another bottle of beer.'