"It is a mistake to suppose that most Trappists have lived in the world. The idea, so widespread, that people take refuge in La Trappe after long sorrows or disorderly lives, is absolutely false; besides, to be able to stand the weakening rule of the cloister it is necessary to begin young, and not to come in worn out with every kind of abuse.
"It is also necessary to avoid confounding misanthropy with the monastic vocation; it is not hypochondria, but the divine call, which leads to La Trappe. There is a special grace, which makes all young men who have never lived in the world long to bury themselves in silence and therein suffer the hardest privations; and they are happy as I hope you will be; and yet their life is still more rigorous than you would think; take the lay brothers, for example.
"Think of their giving themselves up to the most painful labour, and that they have not, like the fathers, the consolation of singing and assisting at all the offices; remember that even their reward, the communion, is not very often conceded to them.
"Now think of the winter here. The cold is frightful; in these decayed buildings nothing shuts properly, and the wind sweeps the house from top to bottom; they freeze without fires, they sleep upon pallets, and they cannot help or encourage each other, for they hardly know each other, as all conversation is forbidden.
"Think, also, that these poor people never hear a kindly word, a word which would soothe and comfort them. They work from dawn till night, and the master never thanks them for their zeal, never tells the good workman that he is pleased.
"Consider, also, that in summer when men are hired from the neighbouring villages to reap the harvest, these rest when the sun scorches the fields; they sit in their shirt sleeves under the shade of the ricks, and drink, if they are thirsty, and eat; and the lay brother in his heavy clothes looks at them and goes on with his work, and neither eats nor drinks. Ah! men must have well-tempered souls to stand such a life."
"But surely there must be some off days," said Durtal, "when the rule is relaxed?"
"Never; there is not even, as in some very strict orders—the Carmelites, to take one instance—an hour of recreation, when the religious may talk and laugh. Here, the silence is eternal."
"Even when they are together in the refectory?"
"Then they read the Conferences of Cassien, the 'Holy Ladder' of Climacus, the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, or some other pious book."