Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/323

Rh be sent there if they showed too much zeal; if their ardor in their sacred office or fervor in preaching should suggest an unfavorable contrast with their ecclesiastical superiors. Nothing would be more likely to subdue any excess of enthusiasm, to cool the ardor of a young apostle or the fervor of his eloquence, than the silence of one of these monks' cells. He might pace up and down the walls that overhang the depth below, and preach to the jackals that make their holes in the rocks on the other side of the abyss; but he would not be likely to disturb the composure of "His Beatitude," the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem.

The Convent serves also, in case of need, the purpose of a caravanserai, not only for pilgrims to the Jordan, but for ordinary travellers. The monks were quite willing to give us lodgings, but we preferred our own clean beds and the fresh air of our tents. We had, however, the full range of the interior, going up-stairs and down-stairs, and even on the roof, as well as through the prison-like quarters of the holy fathers.

One token of the peculiar sacredness of this monastery, is that it is jealously guarded against the intrusion of the other sex. No woman must enter its sacred precincts. I fear the holy fathers would be sorely scandalized if any roguish traveller were to drop a lady's slipper in the court. How quickly it would be thrown over the walls into the chasm of the Brook Kedron, unless perchance it fell under the eye of some poor monk who had left in him a touch of human feeling, and who might, if unobserved by his brethren, snatch it up and hide it in the folds of his coarse robe and take it to his cell, and there shed bitter tears at the thought of the happy days of his childhood, when it was not a sin to look in the warm and loving face of his mother or sister.