CHAPTER XXI.
THE MONK.
The Colonel and Lady Helena made a tour on the continent in the autumn, and visited the little French city where he had earned his living as a teacher of English.
Young Jacob and Edith accompanied them as far as Geneva, and on their way from Paris it was decided that they should stop at Auxerre, and go thence to Avallon, which was not very far from the monastery of La Pierre qui Vire. The Colonel desired to see Philip Stanburne once again.
Through narrow and rocky valleys, indescribably picturesque, and full of a deep melancholy poetry of their own, they journeyed a whole day, and came at last to the confines of the monastery, in a wild stony desert amongst the hills, through which flowed a rapid stream. The ladies could not enter, but young Jacob and the Colonel passed through the simple gateway. A monk received them in silence, and, in answer to a question of the Colonel, put his finger upon his lips. He then went to ask permission to speak from his superior.
The monk promised to lead the Colonel to Philip Stanburne. They passed along wild paths cut in the rock and the forest, with rudely carved bas-reliefs of the chief scenes of the Passion erected at stated distances. They saw many monks engaged in the most laborious manual occupations: some were washing linen in the clear river; others were road-making, with picks and wheel-barrows; others were hard at work as masons, building the walls of some future portion of the monastery, or the enclosures of its fields. All worked and were silent, not even looking at the strangers as they passed. At length the three came to a little wood, and, having passed through the wood, to a small field on the steep slope of a hill. In the field two monks were ploughing in their monastic dress, with a pair of white oxen.
Suddenly the Angelus rang from the belfry of the monastery, and its clear tones filled the quiet valley where these monks had made their home. All the monks heard it, and all who heard it fell instantaneously on their knees in the midst of their labor, wherever they might happen to be. The masons dropped their stones and trowels, the washermen prayed with the wet linen still in their grasp, the ploughman knelt between the handles of his plough, and the driver with the goad in his right hand. The Colonel's guide dropped upon the ploughed earth, and prayed. All in the valley prayed.
When this was over, the two Englishmen were led forward towards the oxen, and before the slow animals had resumed their toil, the Colonel had recognized their driver. So this was the life he had chosen—a life of rudest labor, with the simplest food and the severest discipline—a life of toil and silence. He knew the Colonel at once, but dared not speak to him, and placed his fingers on his lips, and goaded his oxen forward, and resumed his weary march.