“Twenty years ago the Premonstratensians, or rather the White Fathers, as our Provençals call them, had fallen into great poverty. If you had seen their house in those days, it would have made your heart ache.
“The great wall and St. Pachomius’ tower were falling into pieces. Around the weed-grown cloisters the columns were splitting, the stone saints were crumbling in their niches. Not a window was whole, not a door held fast. In the garths and chapels the Rhone wind blew as it does in the Camargue, extinguishing the candles, breaking the lead of the windows, and driving the holy water out of the stoups. But saddest of all was the convent steeple as silent as a deserted dove-cote, and the fathers, for want of means to buy themselves a bell, forced to ring to matins with clappers of almond-wood!...
“Poor White Fathers! I can see them yet, at a Corpus Christi procession, filing sadly past in their patched mantles, pale, thin from their diet of pumpkins and melons, and behind them his lordship the abbot, who hung down his head as he went, ashamed at letting the sun see his crosier with the gilding worn off and his white woollen mitre all moth-eaten. The ladies of the confraternity wept in their ranks for pity at the sight, and the big banner-carriers grinned and whispered to each other, as they pointed at the poor monks:
“‛Starlings go thin when they go in a flock!’
“The fact is that the unfortunate White Fathers were themselves reduced to debating whether they would not be better to take their flight across the world and seek fresh pasture each one where he could.
“So then, one day when this grave question was being discussed in the chapter, a message was brought to the prior that Brother Gaucher asked to be heard before the council.... You must understand that this Brother Gaucher was the convent cowherd; that is to say, he spent his days in wandering from arch to arch of the cloisters, driving two scraggy cows, which sought for grass in the crevices of the pavement. Brought up until his twelfth year by an old half-witted woman in Les Baux, called Auntie Bégon, and then taken in by the monks, the unfortunate cowherd had never been able to learn anything except to drive his beasts and to repeat his paternoster, and even that he said in Provençal; for he had a thick skull, and his wits were about as sharp as a leaden dagger. A fervent Christian, for all that, though somewhat visionary, quite comfortable in his sackcloth, and disciplining himself with strong conviction and such arms!...
“When they saw him enter the chapter-house, simple and clownish, and salute the assembly with a scrape, prior, canons, treasurer, and every one burst out laughing. That was always the effect produced everywhere that his honest, grizzled face appeared, with its goatee and its somewhat vacuous eyes; so Brother Gaucher was not put about.
“‛Your Reverences,’ he said in a good-natured tone, twisting at his olive-stone beads, ‛it’s a true saying that empty barrels make the most sound. What do you think? By putting my poor brains to steep, though they’re soft enough already, I do believe I’ve found the way to get us all out of our difficulties.
“‛It’s this way. You know Auntie Bégon, the good woman who took care of me when I was little—God rest her soul, the old sinner! She used to sing some queer songs when she had drink—Well, what I want to tell you, my reverend fathers, is that when Auntie Bégon was alive she knew the herbs that grow in the mountains as well and better than any old hag in Corsica. And, by the same token, in her latter days she compounded an incomparable elixir by blending five or six sorts of simples, which we used to go and gather together in the Alpilles. That’s many a year ago; but I think that with the aid of Saint Augustine, and the permission of our father abbot, I might—if I search carefully—recall the composition of that mysterious elixir. Then we should only have to put it into bottles and sell it a little dear, and the community would be able to get rich at its ease, like our brethren at La Trappe and the Grande....’
“He had not time to finish. The prior got up and fell on his neck. The canons took him by the hands. The treasurer, even more deeply moved than any of the others, respectfully kissed the frayed hem of his cowl.... Then each returned to his stall to deliberate; and in solemn assembly the chapter decided to entrust the cows to Brother Thrasybulus, in order that Brother Gaucher might devote himself entirely to the preparation of his elixir.