Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/50

 novitiate profane study is prohibited (the perusal of a Greek grammar one day brought me as severe a reprimand as if it had been a French novel) and the time is occupied with religious exercises, of which we had seven or eight hours daily, and the study of our rule and constitutions, of ritual, and of ascetical literature. At half-past eleven another section of the Office was chanted, at twelve there was a second halfhour of silent contemplation (an injudicious custom—St. Teresa rightly maintained that one cannot meditate fasting), and at 12.30 the welcome dinner bell was heard. Growling, rather than reciting, a ‘De Profundis’ for departed benefactors, we walked in silent procession to the refectory, where, standing face to face in two long rows down the room, we chanted a long and curiously intonated grace.

Dinner was dispatched in strict silence: two friars read aloud, in Latin and English alternately, from Scripture or some ascetical work, and the superior gave the necessary signals with a small bell that hung before him. There were no table-cloths (for monks are forbidden the use of linen) but our pine tables were as smooth as marble and scrupulously clean. The friars only sit on one side of the table, on benches fixed into the wall, so that the long narrow tables run round the sides of the room. The windows were frosted, for we were overlooked by the police-barracks, whose English and Orange inmates were provokingly interested in our proceedings. The dinner itself was