He made some evidently most respectful remarks to Don Juan in Spanish, and then we all entered the monastery and were shown into a guest-room.
Here in a few minutes another lay brother brought a liqueur stand with glasses.
"Veritable Chartreuse," remarked Don Juan, as he laid his hand on the little decanters of green and yellow liquid, "the true stream drunk at the source!"
He filled the little glasses and handed them round as the lay brother stood looking on admiringly.
"You must take some," he said, "or they will be offended."
St. Nivel sipped his glass appreciatively.
"The monk who invented this," he remarked sententiously, "deserved to go to heaven."
"Our abbot will give himself the honour of waiting upon your lordships," were the lay brother's parting words as translated to us by Don Juan.
We possessed our spirits in contentment, and awaited his coming, whilst d'Alta expatiated on the rigours of the Trappists' life, their isolation, their silence, their exactness in the keeping of the Office of the Church.
I fear this discourse, earnest though it was on the part of our host, was lost upon St. Nivel, whom I detected catching flies—and liberating them immediately—in the most solemn part. To him the severest form of penance was represented by a life from which all descriptions of "huntin'" and "shootin'" were excluded. He had been burning to kill something big in the game line ever since he had set foot on shore, and I was quite prepared to hear him ask the abbot when he arrived whether he was "a huntin' man." He had asked that question of almost everybody we had met up to then in Aquazilia.