Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/70

 give us a class in Latin; even during that half hour he used to write letters, and we would purposely make the most atrocious blunders and conduct ourselves in the wildest manner our imagination could suggest.

Our long Saturnalia came to an end at last with the arrival of a second and younger professor, who entered into the work of reform with alarming zeal. He was fresh from the Belgian province, in which a perfect discipline (from a mechanical point of view) prevails in the houses of study. Young, intensely earnest, and sincerely religious, he made an honest effort to reform us without losing our sympathy, but, as he knew little more of our studies than we did, and had an uncontrollable temper, and a conspicuous harshness of character, he alienated us more and more as time went on. From Belgium too, he had imported the system of espionage which is deservedly odious to English students; he considered that the necessary rigour of monastic discipline justified it. However, he never cared to be caught in the act, and we gave him many a mauvais quart d’heure by running to the door of our study room when we saw his shadow near it, and chasing him through the convent in his anxiety not to be seen. At length we appealed to authority, and effected his deposition and removal. In later years I learnt to esteem and respect him, and he made rapid progress in the order and in the