Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/157

Rh Late in the afternoon the lay-brother and one of his comrades were missing from the religious exercises. After a long search they were at length discovered in one of the workshops in a profound slumber, with the half empty bottle and all the materials of punch on a table beside them.

At Louvain they had been forced to build a special entrance to the monastery for the introduction of their beer, for an unsympathetic Liberal lived opposite the great gate and kept a malicious record of the quantity they consumed. One of the greatest concerns of a superior is his wine-cellar, for he knows well that his chance of re-election is closely connected with it: in fact, on one occasion, when I had asked why a certain young friar seemed to be a popular candidate for the highest position before an election, I was told with a smile that ‘his brother was a wine merchant.’ Wherever I went in Belgium, to monasteries, nunneries, or private houses, I found that teetotalism was regarded as a disease whose characteristic microbe was indigenous to the British Isles.

The first unfavourable impression I made upon my hosts was by my unintelligible refusal to drink. We arrived at Ghent for dinner, and after dinner (with the usual pint of strong ale) four of us sat down to five or six bottles of good claret: I drew the line at six glasses and at once attracted as much suspicion as a ‘water-bibber’ of ancient Greece or