"How do you become monks?" we inquired, interested.
"We cannot do so till we are thirty years of age—we are novices at first, and free to go away, but at thirty we can decide to take the vows, give up all we possess, and dedicate our lives to the Church, if we desire to do so. Then our name is struck off the police rolls."
"You are lost, in fact?"
"Yes, lost to the world, for although while novices we can get away occasionally for a time on important business, once we become monks it is hardly possible to obtain leave of absence. A monk," he continued proudly, "wears a tall hat, has a room to himself, is waited upon by a probationer, sits at the upper table, and leads a much easier life as regards all kinds of work."
He had spoken such splendid German, this fine young fellow with the sympathetic eyes, through which his very soul shone, that we again complimented him.
"I used to speak some French," he said; "for we had a French governess, as children, and always spoke that language in the nursery; but since I have been here there has been so little occasion to employ it, I have quite forgotten that tongue. Indeed, in four years—for I have stayed some months beyond my time of punishment—I find even my German, which, as I told you, is my mother's language, getting rusty, and I am not sure that I could write it in Latenischen-Buchstaben now at all."
"What a pity," we exclaimed, "that you do not read French and German so as to keep your knowledge up to date."
"We are not allowed to read anything that is not in the Cloister Monastery," he replied, "which for the most part only contains theological books, with a few scientific works, and those are written in Russian, Hebrew, Slavonic, and Greek, so I have no chance, you see."
"Do you mean to say you have no opportunity of keeping up the knowledge you already possess?"
"Not that kind of knowledge. I love botany, but there are no books relating to botany here—so I am forgetting that also. We never read, even the monks seldom do."