Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/161

 studies are conspicuously barren, and, though the Catholic university opens its halls gratis to them, it is with great reluctance that they allow one or two of their students to enter it: to graduate they regard as an unpardonable sin.

Their utter innocence of philosophy led them to take a dangerous interest in my welfare, and gave me a practical idea of the way in which Roger Bacons are victimised. Mgr. Mercier had sent me Paul Janet’s ‘Causes Finales’ to read, and whilst I was doing so one of the elder friars came to glance at the title of my book. He considered it for some moments perplexed, and at length exclaimed: ‘Tiens! la cause finale, c’est la mort!’ I offered no correction, and he departed to discuss the matter as usual. Then one of the younger friars recollected that he had read somewhere that Paul Janet was ‘chef de l’ecole spiritualiste’ in France, and, nobody knowing the difference between spiritism and spiritualism, it was agreed that I was busy in the questionable region of ‘spooks.’ When Mgr. Mercier went on to lend me the works of Schopenhauer (and they had looked up the name in the encyclopedia) there was a serious question of breaking off my intercourse with him and writing to England of my suspected tendencies. Happily I was in a position to treat them with supreme indifference, for I was neither their subject nor their guest: they were paid (by my Mass fees) for my maintenance—which cost them nothing—and even my books,