"Yes, but you are minimists, you suppress the family and woman, you live on nothing, and expect the only real recompense for your labours after death. How can you make the people in the towns understand that?"
"The social system may thus be summed up, as I think: the masters wish to profit by the workmen, who in their turn desire to be paid as much as possible for as little work as possible. Well, then, there is no way out of that."
"Exactly, and there is the sad part of it, for socialism in fact arises from kindly ideas, just ideas, and will always run up against egotism and gain, against the inevitable breakers of the sins of man.
"And your little chocolate factory gives you at least some income?"
"Yes; that saves us."
The abbot was silent for a second; then he went on,
"You know, sir, how a convent is founded. I take for example our Order. A domain and the lands about it are offered the Order on condition that it peoples them. The Order takes a handful of its monks, and settles them as a swarm on the soil given to it. There its task stops. The grain must spring up of itself, or to put it differently, the Trappists, severed from their mother-house, must gain their livelihood, and suffice for themselves.
"So when we took possession of these buildings we were so poor, that from bread to shoes everything was lacking; but we had no anxiety for the future, for there is no example in monastic history that Providence has not succoured abbeys who trusted in it. Little by little we drew our food from the estate, and we learnt useful trades; now we make our habits and our shoes; we reap our wheat and make our bread; our material existence is therefore assured, but the taxes crush us; therefore we have founded this factory, of which the report becomes better from year to year.
"In a year or two the building which shelters us, and for want of money we have been unable to repair, will tumble down, but if God then allows generous souls to come to our aid, perhaps we shall be in a condition to build a monastery, which is the wish of all of us; for indeed this hovel with its rooms in confusion, and its rotunda-chapel, is painful to us."
The abbot was silent again, then after a pause he said in a low voice, speaking to himself,