I remember a small monastery, nestling beneath the sides of a frowning mountain, surrounded by pine forests, dark and mysterious. The way leading there was tortuous, stony, difficult of access, yet the place itself was a small meadow-encircled paradise of tranquillity, green and reposeful as a dream of rest.
Strange old monks inhabited it—silent recluses, buried away from the world, shadowy spectres, almost sinister in their aloofness, their eyes having taken the look of forest-dwellers who are no more accustomed to look into the eyes of men.
Noiselessly they followed me wherever I went, heads bent, but their eyes watching me from beneath shaggy brows, their hands concealed within their wide hanging sleeves; it was as though dark shadows were dogging my every step.
I turned round and looked into their obscure faces—how far-away they seemed! Who were they? What was their story? what had been their childhood, their hopes, their loves? For the most part, I think, they were but humble, ignorant beings, with no wider ideals, no far-away visions of higher things. Some were so old, so bent that they could no more raise their heads to look up at the sky above; their long, grey beards had taken on the appearance of lichens growing upon fallen trees.
But one there was amongst them, tall and upright, with the pale, ascetic face of a saint. I know not his name, naught of his past; but he had a noble visage, and meseemed that in his eyes I could read dreams that were not only the dreams of this earth.
I cannot, alas! speak of all the convents I have seen, but one I must still mention, for indeed it is a rare little spot upon earth.
Hidden within the mouth of a cavern, lost in the wildest mountain region, there lies a tiny wee church, so small, so small that one must bend one's head to step over the threshold; it appears to be a toy, dropped there by some giant hand and forgotten. Only a tiny little wooden chapel guarded by a few hoary old monks, creatures so old and decrepit that they seem to have gathered moss like stones lying for ever in the same place....
No road leads to this sanctuary; one must seek one's way to it on foot or horseback, over mountain steeps and precipitous rocks. There it lies in the dark cave entry, solitary, grey, and ancient, like a hidden secret waiting to be found out.
Behind the wee church the hollow stretches, dark and tortuous, running in mysterious obscurity right into the heart of the earth. When the end is reached a gurgling of water is heard—a spring, ice-cold, bubbles there out of the earth, pure and fresh as the sources in the Garden of Eden....
I have known of passionate lovers coming to be married in this church, defying the hardships of the road, defying nature's frowning barriers, so as to be bound together for life in this far-away spot where crowds cannot gather.