The abbé in his turn began to laugh.
"Do you know the Superior of the Benedictines, in the Rue Monsieur?" said Durtal.
"I have spoken with her once or twice; there the parlour is monastic, there is not the provincial and middle-class side of the Rue Tournefort, it is composed of a sombre room, of which all the breadth at the end is taken up by an iron grating, and behind the grating are again wooden bars, and a shutter painted black. You are quite in the dark, and the abbess, scarcely in the light, appears to you like a phantom."
"The abbess is, I suppose, the nun, elderly, fragile and very short, to whom Dom Etienne committed the novice?"
"Yes. She is a remarkable shepherdess of souls, and what is more, a very well educated woman of most distinguished manners."
"Oh," thought Durtal: "I can imagine that these abbesses are charming, but also terrible women. Saint Teresa was goodness itself, but when she speaks in her 'Way of Perfection' of nuns who band themselves together to discuss the will of their mother, she shows herself inexorable, for she declares that perpetual imprisonment should be inflicted on them as soon as possible and without flinching, and in fact she is right, for every disorderly sister infects the flock, and gives the rot to souls."
Thus talking they had reached the end of the Rue de Sèvres, and the abbé stopped to rest.
"Ah," he said, as if speaking to himself, "had I not had all my life heavy expenses, first a brother, then nephews to maintain, I should many years ago have become a member of Saint Benedict's family. I have always had an attraction towards that grand Order, which is, in fact, the intellectual Order of the Church. Therefore, when I was stronger and younger, I always went for my retreats to one of their monasteries, sometimes to the black monks of Solesmes, or of Ligugé, who have preserved the wise traditions of Saint Maurus, sometimes to the Cistercians, or the white monks of La Trappe."
"True," said Durtal, "La Trappe is one of the great branches of the tree of Saint Benedict, but how is it that its ordinances do not differ from those which the Patriarch left?"
"That is to say that the Trappists interpret the rule of Saint Benedict, which is very broad and supple, less in its spirit than in its letter, while the Benedictines do the contrary.